…and there is enough evidence to conclude the truth of the matter– and you are innocent.  Would you rather the jury consist of 12 people who carefully examine the evidence and base their decisions and their understanding of the world on the analysis of this evidence, or would you rather the jury consist of 12 individuals whose understanding of the world is guided by faith?

What if the same scenario is repeated, except that the evidence suggests and the truth is that you’re guilty?

A muttering man of religious bent, late for an assignation, says aloud: “Jesus, if you’ll only find me a parking space, I swear to God that I’ll give up the women and the Irish whiskey for the rest of my life.”  Sure enough, a parking space appears, and he turns in.  ”Never mind, I found one myself.”

A typical salad, that may or may not have gone bad.

Sometimes you buy a salad. before you eat it, you wonder, “has this gone bad?” Here are some quick tips to figuring it out:

1) It smells gross
Smell your salad. Does it smell gross, like a 3-day old animal carcass?  Then it’s probably gone bad. Normally, salad smells almost like nothing– or, vaguely, of something good.

2) It tastes disgusting
Generally people enjoy salad for its taste, and low calorie content. But if it tastes disgusting, like you just chugged from the large intestines of an entire village of dysentery, that’s a sign that your salad may have gone bad.

3) It looks all rotten
Salad should be pleasing to look at. Leaves should be green and crunchy; salad contents should look fresh. If it looks all rotten and gross, like a pile of scabs drizzled in acne pus, it may have gone bad.

Example of sickness, a feeling of illness.

4) You get sick after you eat it
Throwing up a bunch is never fun.  But there is usually a reason for it.  Salad should invigorate you profoundly after you eat it. You’ll feel healthy and glowful. If you become vomitously sick, or feel like a complete piece of asscrap, your salad may have gone bad before you ate it.

5) Your dog won’t go near it
Dogs are hungry and curious. They love to eat whatever they can; though it must be said that salad is a low priority for dogs. However, if your dog is avoiding your salad to a high degree, it may be triggering an instinct called “fear”. This may indicate that the salad has gone bad.

6) A viscous liquid sludge has formed at the bottom of the salad
Salad generally contains no viscous sludgey materials soaking around at the bottom. If you find this substance and it reminds you of reindeer vomit, or catfish backwash, it may mean your salad has gone bad.

With these tips, it should be easy for you to figure out when your salad has gone bad. Good luck!

Just for fun, I decided I would go and have a look at Amazon Canada member reviews for BBC’s 2006 nature-doc stunner, Planet Earth.  It rates a pretty solid 4.5 overall, kudos BBC, kudos, David Attenborough.

If you’ve seen the show, you know that it’s the best thing you had ever seen up to that point in your life, by and large.  That said, it struck me as shocking, bizarre, outrageous even, that there were *5* ratings of 1-star-out-of-5.  That is to say, *5* people rated it the lowest possible value.

To illustrate the point, these people could theoretically buy a DVD of this:

and give him a rating-out-of-five no lower than they gave BBC’s Planet Earth– and no part of the Planet Earth literature describes itself as “:P If you liked this you will like me haha”.

So what do these reviews say?  How could these people possibly account for this massive departure from the rest of the voting corpus?  What explanations could they have?  Let’s have a look at each one:

Disappeared, by Wendy A Walker, Feb 6 2009

As already indicated to the seller, this product never actually got to the intended gift recipient. I asked for a mail trace and have yet to hear back. Communication with them so far has not been replied to, so am not sure what to do.

Wendy thought that because she bought a (likely used) copy of the DVD set from some internet skid and said skid didn’t actually send the DVD set to Wendy’s lucky gift recipient, that she should go ahead and rate the entire program 1/5.  Wendy, thank you for sharing the details of your pathetic internet purchase attempt, but I believe that the DVD series is not responsible for your inability to do anything right.  If it’s the thought that counts, I’m sure whomever was on the receiving end of your attempt-at-giving is just as grateful for the 5 to 10 seconds you spent buying them some used shit online from whatever shady character’s prices had the rockiest bottom.

These three take their technical issues out on the series:

my copy is not working, by odel69, Feb 11 2008

my copy is not working. i read that other customers had the same problem… is there any solution? … i really want to watch this series…

No, there is no solution.  They just released non-working versions, end of story.  Strangely, most people still rated it 5/5.

Would love to see it, by Fresca, Mar 26 2008

R.CAIN,I would like to know the procedure involved with the FIRMWARE update (dvd/internet???)   I thought the dvd’s were blank, so I returned them and ordered again. Unfortunatly, the 2nd were the same. Please provide me with the info on how to make these work on my hd dvd player.

Blah blah blah DVD/INTERNET???  FIRMWARE update?!?!!?!?  1/5!!!  If you’re talking about firmware updates for your PIECE OF SHIT DVD PLAYER you have completely MISUNDERSTOOD the nature of your problem and where you should be posting your one-star-ratings.

obsolete, by Gillian Clark, Mar 26 2009

Have not been able to view this DVD as when we tried to play it we found our DVD players do not play HD format. Then discovered that HD format has been obsolete for over a year. So why is this product still being sold at full price with no warnings?

This is the equivalent of saying: “Hey, bought this bicycle would love to have ridden it but I have no legs and I can’t ride it so why didn’t they say BICYCLE FOR PEOPLE WITH TWO LEGS like there were no warnings or anything and it was sold at full price.”

This is how it works, Gillian: You are the consumer.  You have to “warn yourself” by LEARNING and READING INFORMATION.  If I make a hat I don’t say “WARNING: HEAD REQUIRED.”  If I have a COMPUTER I don’t buy an XBOX360 game and think “SILVER DISC GO IN, SILVER DISC MAKE GAME!@!!!@!@!1  GAME MAKE HAPPY!!@!!@! ”

Finally:

Same footage of Disneynature’s Earth., by Ronda Collicutt, Sep 30 2009

I was quite disappointed in BBC’s Planet Earth. Two days ago I purchased Disneynature’s Earth and I was impressed with the footage on Blu-ray for 29.99.   So I thought maybe BBC’s Planet Earth would be awesome to watch, so I purchased it today for 89.99 and I have never been so ripped off in my entire life. It included the same scenes and footage of Disney for triple of the price. WTF? Outraged and I cannot return it now as it is out of the original package and that I am watching it right now.

RONDA is outraged!  NOBODY rips off Ronda!  Not if they intend to be safe from a 1-star review!  Ronda is a cool cat and smart cookie!  Though, smart cookie as she is, and as angry as she is at how Planet Earth ripped her off with it’s $90 price and stolen Disneynature Earth footage, she failed to realize that Earth was released in 2007, Planet Earth in 2006.  You know, like, after.  Still!  STILL!  Planet Earth Inc. STILL RIPPED HER OFF, with their TIME-REVERSE THEFT OF MATERIAL!

Ronda also must have overlooked the first line in the description of Disneynature’s Earth: “A nature documentary compiled from the vast footage of the BBC’s and The Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth series and…“ but that’s okay!  She was too busy being shrewd and angry and ripped off!

In fact, she claims, she’s never been so ripped off in her in her entire life!  Why, this RIP OFF TIME-REVERSE THEFT SERIES is three times the price!  Ronda again, eyes squinted and tear-filled, face red with intelligence, hands clenched in sheer perspicacity, fails to note that Disneynature’s Earth is 90 minutes long, whereas Planet Earth, an entire series, contains 10 50 minute episodes, as well as bonus features and a different narrator.  That’s at least 500 minutes, or over 5 times as much content.  Perhaps she believes the Planet Earth series is simply the Earth movie run back-to-back a few times.  If you subtract 90 from 500, you get 410 minutes, which is at least the amount of additional time Ronda should be kept safely off the streets, if it weren’t for her keen and perceptive nature.

Humanity gets.

I’m sorry to take a dump on your favourite childhood passtime, but dump I must. You see, I disagree with the idea that the 8s were “crazy”. The 8s were the trailblazers. The 8s were the ones who bucked tradition.

All the other cards have to “follow suit” — you know, oh, a club, well, you have to be another club if you want in.

That shit is basically racist!

Not to mention conformist.  It’s sad really, it makes me sad.  Sad like a boy stroking the hair of his pony, right before it’s time for his pony to die.  His pony has gangrene.  His pony has gangrene! Guess riding through the rustswamp wasn’t such a great idea, huh?

So what is so CrAzY about the 8s?  They just change the suit.  In some versions of the game you can lay down multiples of the same number to effectively change the suit.  And in all versions, I can lay the same number card on top of yours to change suit.  Is that so crazy?  I don’t think the 8s are crazy at all.  If they are, then the game should be called “Crazy 8s And Sometimes All The Other Cards”.

But even the 8s aren’t always “crazy”.  Sometimes, when a player wants the suit to remain as-is, they will play the 8 and leave the suit unchanged.  Now that seems crazy!  But certainly it’s not the 8s fault.  It’s the fault of the player.  So the game should be called “Occasionally Crazy 8s And All The Other Cards Too”.

But what’s so crazy about changing suits?  A business man does.  A business man changes suits. Does that make the business man crazy?

If that business man is crazy, why are so many people investing in the business man’s business?  Maybe he’s only occasionally crazy too.  Perhaps while his suit remains constant at work, he’s not crazy.  But when he switches suits in the morning, or to go for an evening swim, then the business man is crazy.  Or maybe the investors are crazy.  But so many?  That almost seems like everyone is crazy.  But is everyone crazy?

I think it would be crazy not to change suits.  After all, nobody wears the same suit every day.  So really, everything other than changing suits is crazy, so the 8s are the least crazy of all.  So the game should be called “Crazy Everything Other Than The 8s Ocassionally, and Sometimes the Others Too”.

But ultimately, it’s up to the player using the cards, is it not?  For the player could pass, leaving all of his or her cards from being crazy.  Maybe holding on to your cards is the sanest possible thing– after all, holding on to a baby isn’t crazy.  Holding on to a baby isn’t crazy. So the game should be called “Crazy Players”.

But are the players crazy?  It seems to me that the players aren’t crazy at all.  They can, for example, remember all the rules.  Presumably they aren’t sociopaths, because this is a fairly social game after all.  Certainly playing cards isn’t crazy.  So the game should be called “Crazy”.

But is the game crazy?  It doesn’t seem like it’s really any different than any other game.  You have tokens, rules, and players.  So the game should be called “normal.”

But is the game normal?

Naw, that shit is CRAZY!