License Plate Watch 10

Seen on a Chrysler 300: "SOME CAR".

The really interesting thing about this California plate was that it was the older style yellow characters on blue base type. Due to that I'd assume it has been transferred from car to car for many years. (New California plates have been various styles of blue characters on white base since 1987.)

CUSP: A Review

I have written previously about what I called Really Big Concepts in science fiction. For that novel, it worked. For this novel, CUSP, by Robert A. Metzger, it initially works, but ultimately fails.

The novel opens in 2031 as a solar flare of unprecedented size is occurring. Some people realize it is not just an exceptionally large flare; it's edges are absolutely straight. Something is controlling it. And it is causing the Sun to move.

At the same time this is occurring, two monstrous walls, many miles wide and tall, rise from the Earth, while all of the planet's seismic faults simultaneously snap. The walls straddle the planet in two directions, along the equator and across the poles. All of this throws the entirety of the planet's civilization into chaos. Soon after that the solar flare shuts down and the Sun stops moving.

CUSP then jumps to the year 2051. The survivors of the 2031 events have been spending the time both trying to recover and to understand what happened. It is at this point that author Metzger starts bringing in metaphysical concepts that I feel ultimately cause the failure of this novel.

In 2051 one man, a U.S. Army General, has gathered enough intelligence about the events of 2031 to know that the Sun's controlled flare will soon start up again to resume moving the star, and at the same time energy output from the planetary walls (now called the Rings) will cause Earth to move with it, and there is no way he or anyone else can stop all that from happening.

But the General is determined to find a way to exert some degree of control on the manner in which the movements of the Sun and the Earth occur. And this is where the metaphysics start coming into play. The General believes the only way he will obtain such control is if humanity transcends itself and moves to a higher level of existence (moves past the Point, to use author Metzger's word.)

I found the talk between characters about transcending the Point eventually got so dense that I simply found it unreadable and I started skimming pages trying to find something that I would find more readable. And for me, such a development means this is not a novel I will want to retain and eventually read again.

A gas prices map...

I thought this was very interesting. The average gas price for every county/parish/borough in the contiguous 48 states: http://gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

License Plate Watch 9

Seen on a Prius: "HAFGAS2"

Court follow-up

In this post, I wrote about going to a local San Diego court for jury duty. I haven't written about what happened due to dithering on and off about whether to post about it, because of issues that came up. I've finally decided to proceed, so those issues will be brought up later in this post

So, I reported to the Hall of Justice building downtown morning of March 13. Almost immediately after the orientation, I was sent to a court as part of a panel of potential jurors. When we were let into the courtroom I was startled to see one of the attorneys was Bruce Henderson. Now, I'd rather not get into discussion of this, but I do not have a good opinion of Bruce Henderson based on his involvement with several highly notable lawsuits over the last several years. It turned out from the judge's introductory remarks that he is now a San Diego assistant city attorney. (The San Diego City Attorney's office prosecutes misdemeanor cases. This case was about a misdemeanor methamphetamine usage case.)

One of the judge's first questions to the jurors panel was if anyone was familiar with either of the attorneys for any reason. I raised my hand and explained myself, and the judge immediately excused me.

So, I trotted back to the jury services office where I was told I would need to wait for possibly being on other panels of jurors. Nothing happened until 11:30, when everyone in the jury lounge was told to take lunch break.

Shortly after the end of the lunch break I was sent with a new panel to a different courtroom. Now, what this case was about is going to take some explaining. For one thing, the judge told us, it was unusual because it was technically a civil case, but would have elements of a criminal case in it. Namely, that the verdict would have to be a unanimous decision (civil cases normally require only a minimum nine person majority to reach a verdict) and the case would have to proved beyond a reasonable doubt for the state's arguments to be accepted, which does not normally apply to civil cases.

What the case involved was the District Attorney petitioning the court to have a person legally labeled a "sexually violent predator." As the case involved a petition, the person whom the DA was filing the petition against was referred to as "the respondent", not "the defendant". We learned this person (who of course was present in court) had already pleaded guilty to three counts of sexually molesting children, but had chosen to fight the DA's petition.

Needless to say this presented some major issues that the judge and the deputy DA and the respondent's attorney needed to discuss with the potential jurors. This made the process of selecting jurors longer than what I assume would be normal. That process of course started that afternoon, and had to be continued March 14. I was called from the panel to be questioned at about 11:15 AM of March 14.

One of the interesting questions from the deputy DA for each person was if that person had any interest in cartoons or cartooning. Well, I used to have an active hobby related to Warner Bros. studio classic cartoons, so I briefly talked about that. He also asked me to explain what I do at my job, so I also briefly talked about that. The respondent's attorney had more generally philosophical questions for me.

After I was questioned, the next turn for using a peremptory challenge belonged to the respondent's attorney. He excused another person, then someone else was called for questioning. After that round of questioning, it was the deputy DA's turn to use a peremptory challenge. After thinking about it for (I think) at least 30 seconds, he excused me.

And the jury selection process continued on as I walked out of the courtroom as I heard another person being called for questioning.

So with that I was released from this jury duty.