A person who drinks alcohol to excess habitually.

I did some research on MP3 players in preparation for making a special request to Santa. It seems the MP3 market has bifurcated into low-end memory-based devices running around $100 and high-end disk-based devices running around $300-400. The low-end products are really small now, but almost all support only the slower USB 1.0 spec, meaning you spend several minutes downloading a single album. I guess the thinking is (1) the low price point doesn’t support the extra cost of USB 2.0 and (2) with such small capacities—like 128MB—there’s no real point in faster downloading. But spending five minutes downloading an album is never any fun if you’re on your way to the gym, even if it’s only one album.

The disk-based high-end products, of which the new Dell device is the prominent example, have capacities of 5 or 10 or 20 or 40 GB and they all support USB 2.0, but they’re also HEAVY, and not entirely robust in an environment where you’re moving around like the gym.

What’s needed is a memory-based device with larger capacity and USB 2.0 support—and I found it: the Creative Nomad MuVo^2. With a capacity of 512MB, it holds a dozen or more albums at a time. Santa heard my prayers and brought me this nice toy. But I do have some minor quibbles.

1. The LCD display is too small and hard to read. It should fill the entire front of the device.

2. The controls are hard to manipulate in a gym environment. Too often, the device confuses a press on the right edge of the main control knob with a click on its middle.

3. The player looks like a mountable disk and you copy music to it by just dragging and dropping; but files downloaded from MusicMatch don’t know they are being copied to a portable and end up copy-protected and unplayable. I can copy to the portable from within MusicMatch Jukebox but it doesn’t realize that there’s a USB 2.0 connection and apparently limits itself to USB 1.0 speeds, and doesn’t know how to create new folders on the portable device. There’s a jukebox/library manager that comes with the device that can copy files fast and deals correctly with the copy-protection problem but the last thing I need is another music manager right now. But it’s the only way to create playlists choosing from among all the music on the device. MusicMatch Jukebox creates playlists in the right format (M3U) and in theory I could copy those to the device but they all contain absolute paths to the MP3 files as stored on my music server. Sigh.

Other than that, this is a cool device—the MP3 player I look foward to having as my second-generation music companion in the gym for the next couple of years. The first generation I had was the Nike PSA I bought a couple of years ago for $300; it held 64MB, served me well, and finally died a noble death a month or two ago. What will the third generation bring?

The study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as the Bible).

I picked up “Against Love: A Polemic”, by Laura Kipnis, thinking that it was about my favorite topic of the moment: the artificiality and meaninglessness of the concept of “love” as our society defines it. Instead, it’s a vapid, repetitive, overblown, overwritten critique of monogamy and marriage—a worthy topic, but not one I needed to read 250 pages of her hyperthyroidal prose about.

Kipnis can’t even figure out where she wants to come down on the whole issue. On one page, she seems to think it’s real funny that people horse around and destroy their marriages; then on the next, she suddenly switches over to criticizing the stupid things people do to make marriage fail. Which is it, Laura?

The new on-line music services charge only $9.99 for an entire album—gee, what a bargain, right? Just compare that to prices almost double that in stores.

But wait a minute. Leaving aside the fact that the music companies have no production or retailing costs other than the cost of running their on-line store, has anyone considered the fact that the average consumer holds on to a physical CD for 10 years or more, but will have to buy the album they bought on-line all over again the minute their hard disk crashes, they forgot where they put the music, or they toss their computer without remembering to salvage the music from it?

Combine this with the fact that all the services selling on-line albums for $9.99 continue to put various types of copy restrictions on them—for instance, MusicMatch, the service which I’ve started to use, allows you to play music you bought there on only three PCs at any given time. You can burn the albums to physical CDs but are people really going to do that?

Given all that, isn’t the sweet spot for on-line album prices $4.99 instead of $9.99? And by extension, 49cents a track instead of 99cents?

I recently made a 3-night hotel reservation in Las Vegas through Expedia. Had to pay the whole thing in advance. But then I had to leave a day early. Come to find out, there is no way to cancel or refund the third night. And it wasn’t that I was getting an especially good rate—checking the same hotel rates on-line now, it seems that if anything Expedia was overcharging me a bit.

I had a discussion with a gentleman at Expedia about this issue, and asked him the obvious question—why should anyone reserve hotels through Expedia? He finally admitted that reserving directly with the chain would be better in many cases.

I personally find that I do my best Zazen after bathing, for then I am freshest, but this is not absolutely essential. In Sojiji it was not possible for priests, in their junior years, to have a bath more often than once every five days, according to the rules, but still they must do their Zazen every day. Since I was a woman and, during my junior years the women’s bathroom had not yet been built, I frequently had to do without a bath for as long as two months which has proved to me that, although personal freshness is a definite aid to meditation, it is not absolutely essential.

Whew.

The above is from a great book, now out of print (I picked it up on Amazon’s used service) called “Zen is Eternal Life”, by Roshi P.T.N.H. Jiyu-Kennett. I really like this book. It harkens back to a simpler time, when Zen what was they did in Japanese Zen temples, but it still covers interesting topics such as the relationship between Zen and Gautamistic Buddhism. The last half of the book contains her own translations of several Zen classics including lots of Dogen. Of course I can and do quibble about the translation but that’s just me being picky.

I also picked up a new Zen book called “The Path of the Human Being” by Dennis Genpo Merzel. Genpo Roshi is a great teacher, but his book is just so earnest and boring and devoid of any fun or spirit or insight.

Following my prescient post from last month, entitled Google’s real competitor: Amazon, it’s amusing to note that Google wasted no time in coming out with a copy-cat service. Meanwhile, Amazon has created a new subsidiary called A9 to steal some of Google’s thunder in the search area, as regards e-commerce in particular.

Victims rights are hugely popular now and very politically correct. For instance, in Nevada the law provides for victims to be “heard at all proceedings for the sentencing or release of a convicted person after trial,” where a victim is defined as anyone with a direct family relationship with the actual victim; the accused’s family has no such rights. That’s blatantly unfair. Can’t that be challenged in the courts?

And Nancy Reagan spoke out against the decision to allow John Hinckley unsupervised visits with his parents, referring to Jim Brady and the pain he still lives in; Michael Reagan called the decision an “outrage”, managing to toss in a demeaning insult relating to the age of Hinckley’s parents (they’re in their 80’s).

Why does Nancy Reagan care? Or Michael? If they think Hinckley is a danger to themselves or society, then they’re going against the expert opinion of five psychiatrists, including two hired by the government. No, what they want is revenge, pure and simple. He shot their husband/dad so he should stay in prison forever and not even get the chance to make day trips with his parents. Lock him up and throw away the key.

To me it’s weird that the media never calls to task any of these victims on their obvious thirst for revenge. Can’t our fearless commentators just come out and point out the truth that these people simply can’t get over it and need counseling? The same goes double for victim’s families who hunger after revenge in the form of legalized murder of the criminal. In Bob’s ideal world, the law guaranteeing them the right to be heard at the sentencing hearing would also require the judge to order them to counseling if they appeared to have become psychologically unbalanced with a rabid desire for revenge.

Yes, I know the victims feel pain. But the law provides objective guidelines for punishment proportional to the gravity of the crime already. We certainly we can’t let the degree of the victim’s pain determine the punishment meted out to the perpetrator.

The trend now is to make your point by giving a new name to the topic you are discussing. In that light, I humbly propose that “Victim’s Rights” be renamed “Victim’s Revenge Rights”.

Recently I’ve been involved in a criminal law situation in Nevada. I’ll skip the exact details. I’ll call the accused “K”.

Although none of us will ever be involved, God forbid, in a criminal legal situation such as K was, there are few painful lessons we learned.

Mr. Steven M. Altig Esq. works for the law firm Wolfson and Glass in Las Vegas, NV. He was chosen to represent K. When we hired him and paid him his not inconsequential retainer, we were moderately hopeful that he would be capable of finding ways to get K. off altogether or get him a reasonably short sentence. What we found out instead to our dismay was that his role was little more than to grease the skids of K’s precipitous descent into the bowels of the NV penal system, probably never to emerge.

Steve’s a good lawyer in his own way. He can answer all the legal questions pretty good. He has very lawyer-like looks and appears dapper in his pricey suits. I don’t know if he’s ever really successfully defended a hard criminal case but in any case in retrospect that was clearly not his objective in K’s case.

Altig and Wolfson have a good niche they are working. There’s no money in the human trash segment. And to get the big bucks you actually have to do creative, aggressive lawyering, something Steve long ago figured out he wasn’t well suited for, or capable of. What better vein to mine, then, than the guilty middle-class arrestee whose family wants the lawyer in a well-tailored suit, and has some money that can go to buy some of Steve’s overpriced hours and those overpriced suits?

Hardball defense lawyering could also hurt a defense lawyer’s relationship with the District Attorney and his deputies and assistants, and Mr. Altig doesn’t want to do that. It won’t do to get on their bad side, when you’ll be seeing them again and again. We saw Mr. Altig out in the hallway outside the courtroom bantering with the assistant DA assigned to K’s case and having a grand old back-slapping, horse-laughing time. The good relationship with the DA is all the more important, of course, if your plan is to eventually move over to their side and work your way up there, although of course I have no way of knowing if that is something Mr. Altig thinks about.

In case 02-C-185170-C, State of Nevada v. K, Mr. Steven M. Altig was particularly uninspired. For instance, there was potential arraignment delay claim that if successful could result in the charges being entirely dropped. Although those charges were entered in 1996, Nevada made no claim against K until 2002. The delay, depending on how you look at it, could be said to be due either to the state where K was previously incarcerated not informing Nevada of the fact that K was in their custody when it came out during the course of K’s incarceration there that he was involved in potential criminal proceedings in Nevada; or, to Nevada failing to make a simple query against a national database into which Vermont had in fact made the necessary entries. In the former case, K has no delay of arraignment case, since the delay must be the fault of Nevada. In any case, K has no claim under delay of arraignment if the delay did not work to the detriment of his case. Mr. Altig did in fact make the motion for dismissal based on arraignment delay and that motion was duly denied by the Honorable Kathy M. Hardcastle of Dept. IV of the District Court, to whom K’s case had been assigned. To a better lawyer, that would have been hardly more than an opening skirmish. To Mr. Altig, that was the most he could do for his miniscule retainer. He spent the rest of the time explaining to us, when he bothered to talk to us at all, about how there was no more juice to be squeezed out of this claim and the die was cast.

Another separate delay issue was the delay in going to trial. Granted this delay was asked for by our side, but a strong lawyer could have gained leverage here as well.

Mr. Altig did not bother to talk to anyone from the family for the period of six months before the trial, in spite of any number of phone calls, letters, and e-mails. It’s not too surprising he didn’t, because he had no strategy, no plan, no idea, other than standing by and looking the other way as K got flushed down the drain into a lifetime to be served in the Nevada state penal system. Unfortunately, K, with whom Altig did meet with some regularity, was not in a position to manage his lawyer well. He was unable to stand up for himself and push for what he believed in and sabotaged himself with periodic bouts of guilt where he thought it was just and right for him to be punished.

A smarter, more creative, or more aggressive lawyer would have reached the conclusion that I finally reached belatedly—that there is no possibility of making anything happen at the lower judicial levels. Nevada is a tough state to start off with and this judge had a “hanging judge” mentality and the DA had assigned one of his toughest young gals to the case. The judge did not bother with any constitutional niceties. She told Mr. Altig, and by extension K, that she had every intention of sentencing him to the most severe sentence permitted by law for his offense. (This was before the trial, and thus of course before any sentencing process.) Steve’s response—should I let you guess?—was not to reserve this information for use in an immediate appeal based on prejudicial behavior by the judge, nor to advise us that we might want to consider going to trial and taking the long sentence but then gaining good appealability based on a potential error on the part of the judge in choosing a sentence inappropriate to the gravity of the crime—but rather to use this fact against K in discussions with him, and with the family, in an attempt to get K to take the unreasonable plea bargain of 15-45 that he finally did accept.

In additional discussions about whether to take the plea bargain or go to trial, Steve advised K and us that the judge was inclined to react with particular severity to any decision by K to go through with the trial since this would condemn several of his young victims to relive their experiences on the witness stand. At the time he said this it seemed to make some sort of perverted sense; but in actuality this is just another abuse of judicial power (and hence appealable issue)—a judge threatening a defendant with negative consequences for exercising his constitutional right to a trial.

Perhaps the most egregious example of Altig’s utter incompetence was his handling of the jury instruction issue. A charge existed in Nevada in 1996 which could reasonably be construed to cover K’s behavior, a much less serious charge, for which the sentence is 1-5. All that was necessary was to get the judge to give the jury instructions to consider this charge, and then make the relevant case to the jury. Admittedly a long-shot strategy, but arguably the only reasonable chance K had to avoid getting locked up for decades. Altig made the specific point to me that if the judge refused to give that instruction then he would have grounds for appeal. This was something he had been telling me as far back as a year ago.

In practice, this strategy evaporated in the course of five minutes sitting in the courtroom with lawyers and DAs and judges conferring in the hallways and in their chambers. Steve suddenly informed K and us that he had asked the judge and she had answered that she was going to refuse to give that instruction. Instead, there was another potentially lesser charge which she was willing to give the jury instructions to consider but wait a minute: if K was found guilty of an aggravated version of that charge, he could actually face life in prison with no possibility of parole! At the time, it seemed like we were being presented with some kind of alternative which of course the drastic worst case forced K to reject; in retrospect, the judge was simply laughing in our faces with her ridiculous non-proposal. What Altig forgot to remind K, or us, of in the frantic minutes of negotiations, was that the only way to take advantage of the judge’s refusal to give the jury instruction for the original less-serious charge was to go through with the trial, then appeal. Instead, it got turned into another reason to plead guilty and accept a sentence only marginally better than the worst K could have gotten by going through with the trial and getting the most severe possible sentence.

One last issue concerns the admissibility of “prior” convictions. It turns out that K did have a conviction for a similar offense—but that offense occurred after the one in question. Nevertheless, the judge ruled that it could be admitted into evidence as a “prior” conviction. Welcome to the world of Kafka, where a “prior conviction” doesn’t actually have to be “prior”. Altig’s weak-kneed response to this ruling of the judge was to opine thoughtfully that the judge was probably right and there was not point in pursuing the issue. This is another appealability issue that evaporated once K accepted the plea bargain as Altig recommended.

The difference is that going though a trial would have preserved all of K’s grounds for appeal, while pleading guilty preserved none of them. This huge difference was neatly skipped over by Mr. Altig in his recommendation to K that he accept the plea bargain.

Another index of the utter bankruptcy of this system is that K was given approximately one hour to make a decision which could make a difference of decades in the length of time he is incarcerated. Lawyers for both sides were pacing back and forth. When is he going to make up his mind? The judge can’t wait all day, now. She repeatedly peeked out impatiently from her chambers into the courtroom—when is that guy going to make up his mind, anyway? During this process, the family was allowed a total of one five-minute discussion with K with one person (me), within earshot of the court officials and lawyers for both sides.

It’s deeply disturbing to me that people like Altig populate our criminal justice system and prey on criminals by taking their money and raising their hopes while actually they are nothing more than accessories in the system by which these defendants are swept away to languish for decades in the penal system.