Dr. X's Free Associations

Vintage Photos: 1939

Josephine County, Oregon (Dorothea Lange).  Left-click photo to enlarge.

Three weeks before opening season, hop pickers are wanted by four big area growers.

Vintage Photos: 1922

The Boardwalk, Atlantic City. Left-click image to enlarge.

Saturday Vintage Photos: 1899

 

Left-click photo to enlarge.

Studio portrait of Ute Native American women. Front, left to right, are: Tachiar, A-Pat-We-Ma, and Ta-Nah; Back, left to right: Ce-Gie-Che-Ok and To-Wee

Vintage Photos:1939

Josephine County, Oregon (Dorothea Lange). Left-click photo to enlarge.

Hop picker with her children goes from paymaster's window to adjoining company-owned store.  She had earned forty-two cents that morning, spent it for one pound bologna sausage, one package "Sensation" cigarettes, one "mother's cake."

When Blind Justice Is Unjust

In criminal trials, jurors are asked to decide on the guilt of defendants without knowledge of the possible consequences of a conviction.  At first glance, this seems like a good idea; let the jury decide the facts and leave it to the judge to apply a sentence within the guidelines of the law.

But Connecticut trial lawyer Norm Pattis objects:

When we refuse to let juries know the truth about the consequences of a conviction in a criminal case we hamper a jury's ability to check the abuse of power. Juries that are not fully informed can't do their job. Withholding truth from juries is dishonest.

We do it every day in Connecticut and call it justice. We refer to juries as the conscience of the community, but we don't treat jurors with such regard. We treat them as moral idiots unsuited to reckon the consequences of their acts...

In what other context do we ask folks to make a decision regardless of the outcome? Recklessness and justice are not twin sisters.

Mark Draughn weighs in:

The instructions to jurors famously include the phrase "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" but, almost as famously, the word "reasonable" is never defined for the jury. It's left to the jurors themselves to figure out what it means. And as a practical matter, wouldn't you expect that the reasonableness of the doubt depends on the consequences of being wrong?

Vintage Photos: c 1940

Location unknown.  Left-click image to enlarge.

Vintage Photos

Lucy Naddy (left) and her younger sister. Left-click photo to enlarge.

Lucy and her brother Richard (below), who lived at 6931 Stoney Island Avenue, Chicago, were arrested and charged with larceny on complaint from a neighbor, Mrs. Lena Payne.

Marijuana for Children with Autism

I'm not about to recommend it, but a mother claims that medical marijuana saved her son's life.  Video.

Vintage Photos: 1922

Winnemucca, Nevada.  Left-click photo to enlarge.

The first service station built in Winnemucca. It was operated by Fritz and Emil Buckingham.

The Whackadoodle Suffix

Call it a vast linguistic conspiracy: proponents of the major conspiracy theo­ries of the day — the truthers, the birthers, the deathers — share a suffix that makes them all sound like whackdoodles. Leslie Savin