…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.”

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 …

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 …

How many times has some fuckhead been like “good morning!” to you, all chipper? This makes a number of GROUNDLESS assumptions.
Groundless Assumption #1 : That this is a morning.
Groundless Assumption #2 : That this is good.
Okay, generally it is morning. Though, oft is the case, I will call someone who works in a “place of business” at around 12:05pm and they will proudly answer the phone with “Good morning, Gerhardt (for example) speaking…” and I will be quick to say “this is no longer morning.  If you check the …

People are always so polite.  Sometimes, if you are impolite, polite people look at one another and slowly, gently, and disappovingly, shake their head.  They slightly and politely pucker their lips and slightly and politely sneer-up their nostrils.  They glance at eachother so slowly, so politely, and with such brevity, that the shared message is “the fellow is so impolite that I’m giving you the bare minimum response needed to acknowledge what we both know: that this urchin is despicable.”
I contend, however, that their politeness is false; is a travesty.  …

When one goes into, say, your Starbucks, or even, dare I say, your Timothy’s, one is greeted with a brand phalanx. Everything from the music you hear to the layout of the tables to the presentation of the napkins is a fastidiously orchestrated fugue that belabours the brand ethos.

A fascinating paradigm shift has occurred, and I would be remiss if not to comment.
Indeed, so important it is, that I decided to make the very first post about it.
Stochastic processes, in particular, those involved in the political econo– ahh, fuck it, here’s a bunch of pictures of pineapples with sunglasses on!!!