Fantastic points, highly insightful. It's funny how the dogma they feed you in the school systems talks about McCarthy's witch hunts, and then ignore the fact that much of what he claimed was actually correct (see Venona Project - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project).

Maybe the old style Syquests were that much, but the EZ135 debuted at $25. A screaming deal at the time.

It always struck me that Zip drives became so ubiquitous. I looked at them briefly for my own use, and chose the Syquest EZ135 instead. The Syquest had a transfer rate 4 times the speed of the Zip drive, and the access time was half that of Zip. About the same cost for drive and cartridges, but 35MB more data per cartridge. Considering my internal drive was a 40MB SCSI drive, that was something. I swear that sometimes the Syquest felt faster than my internal SCSI drive, though I never benchmarked it.

They always mounted, unlike Zips which sometimes had seating difficulties. Later, when Jaz came out, for the same price you could get the Syjet. A faster drive and 50% more storage. Not as reliable as EZ135, but then again, JAZ was a reliability disaster. Oh, well.

Why would Augustine have been burned at the stake? He was raised as a pagan, and in fact lived in a society where Christianity had no domination over the fate of men. I may be mistaken, but it appears from your comments that you have a very emotional response to this very sedate and relaxed message from Dr. Bakker. His primary point was to give credit where credit is due. Many of these people learned a great deal about a great many things without all the advantages we have today.

At the same time, they did not have the disadvantage of learning these things as if they were some obvious fact that was spoon fed to them by a professor. They didn't run around parroting scientific notions that they had no direct knowledge of on the strength of perceived authority. Certainly they had other ridiculous notions, some of which may have been inherited. But on the whole, they were deep thinkers who explored their universe. Most people then and today do not spend 10% of the time these guys did thinking and discovering.

Yes, I am very familiar with Jury Nullification. I absolutely believe it is a Juror's moral responsibility to know it and apply it. But as a matter of pure fact, they typically will not. They will not be read, learned, or educated. The fact that the defendant is the defendant will cause most to assume guilt. In practice, the defendant's attorney will have to work hard to prove his client's innocence. If the client is not good looking, this can be very difficult.

I don't say this in ignorance. I have been called upon as an expert witness. The funny thing is, what I have witnessed most is prosecutors' willingness to try to twist the truth, leave out pertinent information or prevent it from being disclosed, and in fact try to take advantage of the ignorance of juries (and I mean ignorance of the particulars of an industry, for example, not that they are ignorant) to try to win a conviction when there is not only reasonable doubt of guilt, but reasonable probability of innocence.

Just like anyone else, they want to *win*. But they often seem to lose sight that *winning* is convicting the right person of the crime, if indeed a crime has been committed.

It cannot be left to Jury Nullification, which is a little known avenue for justice, and only one that is effective with an informed Jury (rare) who are given the right circumstances to detect a problem with the law itself, or how it is being applied, or with the punishments attached to conviction. Also, in many states, mere mention of it can get you into trouble with the court.

I think you are confusing the prosecution with the defense. It is not the prosecution's job to "throw what he can get away with at the defendant". The prosecution's interest should be to prosecute someone who they believe has committed a crime worthy of prosecution. It is certainly not the job of the jury to determine overreach. The judge is the arbiter of the law, and the jury is merely the arbiter of the fact.

The responsibility of defense is closer to your notion, as famously stated by Justice Byron White. But he spells out the responsibility of the prosecution, as well as other law enforcement, to get it right, even during the trial itself:

"“Law enforcement officers have the obligation to convict the guilty and to make sure they do not convict the innocent. They must be dedicated to making the criminal trial a procedure for the ascertainment of the true facts surrounding the commission of the crime. To this extent, our so-called adversary system is not adversary at all; nor should it be. But defense counsel has no comparable obligation to ascertain or present the truth. Our system assigns him a different mission. He must be and is interested in preventing the conviction of the innocent, but, absent a voluntary plea of guilty, we also insist that he defend his client whether he is innocent or guilty.

The State has the obligation to present the evidence. Defense counsel need present nothing, even if he knows what the truth is. He need not furnish any witnesses to the police, or reveal any confidences of his client, or furnish any other information to help the prosecution’s case. If he can confuse a witness, even a truthful one, or make him appear at a disadvantage, unsure or indecisive, that will be his normal course. Our interest in not convicting the innocent permits counsel to put the State to its proof, to put the State’s case in the worst possible light, regardless of what he thinks or knows to be the truth.

Undoubtedly there are some limits which defense counsel must observe but more often than not, defense counsel will cross-examine a prosecution witness, and impeach him if he can, even if he thinks the witness is telling the truth, just as he will attempt to destroy a witness who he thinks is lying. In this respect, as part of our modified adversary system and as part of the duty imposed on the most honorable defense counsel, we countenance or require conduct which in many instances has little, if any, relation to the search for truth.”

Considering many single malt scotches have a peat moss flavor (which I enjoy), I will agree on the second, but not the first. I think it strange that people in this thread who are making fun of Folgers (which sells far more regular coffee than crystal coffee, by volume) are singing the praises of Sierra Nevada.

Having spent way too much time and money drinking beers from all around the world, Sierra Nevada's products have consistently failed to impress me. They seem to favor the formula used by far too many smaller breweries in the U.S.: take every style they want to make, add a crapton more hops to it, and pretend like they did something special. Substitute with dozens of other over-hopped beers, and most people cannot tell the difference. The same is true for Sam Adams, which is wretched stuff.

Now, other breweries, especially overseas, have a far greater variety of styles that are differentiated. Fuller's has an IPA, lots of hops, and a fine ESB but also offers a much better porter than Sierra Nevada. Felinfoel has an amazing session beer (at one point sold in the US as Thames Welsh Bitter). Aventinus Weizenbock, Paulaner Salvator, and many others offer more than Sierra Nevada.

I've had many a good cup made with Folgers coffee. It's not what I use, though. Maxwell House is where it is at (though their recent change away from Arabica means I don't drink it. It screwed it up. Call them and pressure them to change it back).

Nicely done.