Mostly Plants

Following the acquittal of Shawn Bell’s killers, one of the lawyers pointed out an interesting discrepancy between the New York and Federal criminal procedure systems: in New York, a criminal defendant has a right to a jury trial, and can waive that right.  In the Federal system, however, the United States also has a right [...]

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Yesterday I took possession of a Cornell garden plot out at Plantations, just south of the Dyce bee labs.  I got some Brussels Sprout seedlings from Home Depot and put them straight in the ground, and staked out my plot with dead limbs from the forest that other gardeners have used in the past (I [...]

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I didn’t write in my trail journal on Day 6, so this entry will be based on photographs and memory.

A Graphical Summary of the Trip

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This is technically the sixth day in the desert, but by that count there were seven. We Spent this day mostly on the road, so I do not count it–I give it an irrational number between five and six. Or maybe a complex number, with five as the real part and some non-zero [...]

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The walk from here to Lost Palm Oasis is only about 40 minutes. From the overlook, you see two oases–one down in the canyon, and one on the opposite rim. The trail descends steeply into the gorge, where we immediately encounter fan palms. Some are still well-covered in shag; others have recently burned. The canyon floor is very sandy and these are the beaches we read about–beaches without water. There is very little water here, only sparse seeps leak above the ground. Many of the seeps are fouled with decomposing organic matter. We find a few bones, too small to be Bighorn Sheep, too small to be rabbit. Coyote, maybe?

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This Editorial in the Washington Times begins:
There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it’s perfectly reasonable to strip search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible
The first group includes officials [...]

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Yesterday, in an epic split decision reminiscent of Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Baze v. Reese, the lethal injection challenge case. A copy of the opinion is at http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Baze_v._Rees.

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3/18/2008
9:36 AM
Cottonwood Camp
Warm morning: everybody slept well. Ginger feels better. I’m wearing my kilt and t-shirt at 9:00 AM–a vast improvement over previous days! We cooked the rest of the bacon today, but fully half of it was consumed in a sudden grease fire. I washed the pair of pants that [...]

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What struck me about the article, though, was how The Donald describes his case:

“Trump told the NYLJ that the law firm was preoccupied with fees throughout the case. ‘Ninety percent of the conversations I had with David Scharf were about legal fees, not the case,’ he said. ‘We won the case because I’m a great witness’”

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In today’s edition, our intrepid heroes climb a mountain and hike through the desert to abandoned mines and the tomb of a desperado miner who died by the hand of a rival, fighting over a few scraps of land in the desert.

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