Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Service
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2008 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
For jurors and cops, the job erratically swings between moments of tremendous responsibility and stretches of consuming boredom. Thurber is a fine antidote to the boredom; I finished 356 pages of his short stories and essays today while getting processed into a grand jury and commuting an hour each way.
Last summer I spent two weeks doing physical labor and this summer I'll spend a month doing intellectual labor: evaluating evidence, critical thinking, all that buzz. I may diagram arguments in my juror notes the same way I did in high school debate.
The initial processing room had several bookshelves full of paperbacks, complete with two copies of The Fountainhead.
