Wedneday, June 17, 1914. Successful Rebels. White Wolves and Pancho's.

The "White Wolf", rebel  Bai Lang, broke through a Chinese Army blockade numbering 5,000 men with his 1,000.

Bai Yung-chang, or Bai Langzai, or Bai Lang, the latter of which was a pseudonym, was a 41-year-old rebel and one time governor of Henan and almost bandit, dissuaded from that fate after killing a man in a fight by his family.  He'd been trained in the military arts in Japan and had served in the Beiyang Army after the outbreak of the Chinese rebellion of 1911.  The tugid politics of revolutionary China drove him into allegiance with the bandit forces of Du Quiin.

The Revolution of 1911 has never really resolved, sharing therefore a bit of the history of the Mexican Revolution, which didn't resolve until 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox.  Fox established that Mexico had evolved from a one party state into a true democracy, one which has a solid middle class, no matter how much Mexicans and Americans refuse to believe it, today.  China, on the other hand, fell into an ineffective chaotic republic that collapsed into civil war, from which the Chinese Communist Party emerged as the one party ruler.  Ultimately, and likely soon, that party will fall and a true Chinese republic will emerge, but it's taking quite some time to occur.  Still, no matter its bluster, the current People's Republic of China, will evolve into something else, just as Revolutionary Mexico did.

Another bandit/rebel was in the news in 1914, José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, but by his pseudonym as well, Pancho Villa.

The Mexican Federal government of Gen. Huerta was collapsing, and as it collapsed the news increasing turned towards the spectacular victories of the rebel Ejército del Norte and its leader, Pancho Villa.  And with that, speculation was rampant that Villa would declare himself held of state.

In fact, Villa, who had been fanatically loyal to Modero, was not yet disloyal to Carranza. . . but that day was coming.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, June 14, 1914. Flag Day

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungaria, Flag Day, Holidays, Italy, Red Week, Serbia

It will kill you. . .but it's good for you. . no, wait, it'll kill you . . .

I don't pay very much attention to health related news.  Perhaps I should, but I largely do not.  There's probably a variety of reasons for that, but one of them is that as I have an undergraduate degree in one of the sciences, I tend to be skeptical about the theory de jure to some degree.  I'm not a skeptic of the sciences, but I'm aware that at any one time a previously barely vetted theory is likely to be problematic.  Also, as that science was geology, which tends to take the long view of things, I tend to be skeptical of any health related news, particularly dietary news, that doesn't.

Also, I guess, I'm lucky to not have a lot of the food related problems that inspire theories designed to some degree to be unconventional or easy fixes.  In my middle age, I'm heavier than I have been at any prior point in my life, but I'm not overweight and was really much too think when I was still in my early 20s.  I don't each much for breakfast or dinner as a rule, so a lot of the concerns people have there basically don't apply to me.  So I guess I can afford to be skeptical.

But, given the way health news whips around, I'm amazed everyone isn't skeptical.

Take some items that have been in the news recently, that is in recent years.  Let's take, for example, coffee.

I like coffee (and have blogged on the topic previously) and I drink several cups every morning, typically while waiting to take my daughter to school.  At one time I used to drink it at work as well.

 

World War One YMCA poster showing one of their volunteer women workers who handed out books and, as you can see, coffee, for which I would have been most grateful.

When I was a kid you use to hear the canard that coffee would stunt your growth.  I have no idea where that fable came from, but my folks never believed it and I started drinking coffee in the morning when I was in high school. About that time, in the 1970s, you'd sometimes hear some snarky remarks about coffee containing an addictive drug, caffeine, which of course it does but as an addictive drug its in the category of ones that human beings are probably evolved to handle and its pretty darned harmless for the most part.

In college I was a confirmed coffee drinker.  I've been drinking coffee every morning now for decades.

I did cut back at work and no longer drink it there.  The reasons were self evident, however.  I was just drinking too darned much and it was making me jittery and messing up my sleep.  One Lent I gave it up entirely and when Lent was over I never went back to drinking it at work.

Several years ago, all of a sudden, some newstory came out that coffee might ward off Parkinson's Disease.  Hurrah if true!  Not a reason that I'm going to keep drinking it however.  Some time after that, however, some story came out that at a certain level it was bad for your heart.  Boo.  Still, not going to change my morning habits.  This past week I read that it might help stave off Alzheimer's.  Hurrah again.

Well, what about coffee's traditional rival, tea?

 YMCA poster supposedly showing a volunteer pouring a cup of tea, according to the Library of Congress, but my guess is that's coffee.

Given as its apparently the caffeine in coffee that has alleged benefits, presumably the benefits and risks, if any, of coffee, apply to tea as well.  But I'm not going to take it up, as I'm not really keen on tea.  My son likes it for some reason, and my daughter likes a custom tea drink called a London Fog.  I have no idea what a London Fog actually is.

Anyhow, awhile back there was a rage over Green Tea.  As I like Ice Tea, I bought a bottle figuring tea was tea.

Green tea is vile.

Supposedly green tea contains antioxidants, meaning if you drink it, you will not rust.

No, actually antioxidants are supposedly good for your heart.  I don't know why, but they are.  Well, as good as they may be, I'm not going to drink green tea as it is truly icky.

And my heart is apparently in pretty good shape.  I know that as a year ago I had one of those "stress tests."  This came about as I was having chest pains, although they were not of the type that a person typically assumes come from a heart problem.  Better safe than sorry, they gave me the test.

It was an odd experience, as in a stress test they elevate your heart rate by having you walk an incline plane.  A rising treadmill, as it were.  They told me that they were going to raise my heart rate to a certain level in order to do that.  As it went along, they kept raising and raising it, but my heart wasn't getting there.

"Do you run?'

No.

"Hmmmmm. . . . . ., do you work out a lot?"

No.

"Hmmmmm. . . . we'll raise it a bit more."

By the end, I was walking ain incline plain approximating the difficult face of the Matterhorn.  My heart made it to the appropriate rate and they proclaimed "no problem."

 The Matterhorn.  Apparently my heart is so solid that I could jog up it without ill effect.

Which means that my problem was probably a hiatul hernia or probably true indigestion, for which I am grateful.

This conversation is one that I repeat, on an occasional basis, with my physician, who routinely asks me a series of set questions which are probably designed to encourage folks to exercise, which no doubt is a good idea.  I'm sure that I don't get enough exercise.  Anyhow, what I'll get is "So are you getting any exercise?"  "Um, not really."  "Just ranch work and stress eh?"  "Yeah."

Stress, and not of the stress test variety, does kill, I'll concede.  It's an occupational hazard in my office line of work, which brings me to my next topic, smoking.  Before I do I'll note that awhile back I read that being employed in an occupation, like law, that requires a lot of mental activity can stave of dementia, although I've known of a couple of lawyers who suffered from that.  I'm not sure, however, that stress has any physical benefits.

Anyhow, I don't smoke and never have.  But couple of the lawyers I know at one time smoked cigars during moments of high stress.

Some time ago I read something that claimed that the occasional cigar, like caffeine, might stave off Parkinsons.  Obviously this opinion is suspect, as the occasional cigar would have to be extremely occasional as the risk of cancer would obviously override any benefit that tobacco might conceivable have.  How an opinion like this even gets generated leads a person to wonder about some of these efforts.

If smoking is the topic of such studies, than surely drinking must be as well, and indeed it has been.

This probably isn't too surprising, as alcohol is a poison (which it actually is) that humans beings are acclimated to, to a degree, such that its evidence that humans started ingesting alcohol, for some legitimate reason, in vast antiquity.  Indeed, it's known that beer is not only the single most consumed manufactured beverage on earth but that its one of the oldest.  Maybe the oldest.  Recipes for beer date back to Mesopotamia, and pretty much every culture on Earth has brewed it.

Speculation is that beer was originally brewed as it was a form of liquid food. Bread, basically, that would keep.  At some point it became safer to drink than water out of streams or rivers.  The same is true of wine.  To some degree, the alcoholic beverages of the ancient world to the Medieval one were based on region rather than purely taste, although qualitative differences in both go back into antiquity.  Suffice it to say, both drinks were the normal drinks for many people on a daily basis for much of human history.

Which does not mean, of course, that they were uniformly safe up until modern times. The danger of excessive drinking has always been there.  And just as records of drinking as a common practice go back into vast antiquity, the dangers of drinking too much have been noted back that far as well.

Americans, it should be noted, have a weird panicky relationship with their food and always have.  Alcoholic beverages are no exception to this.  The founding of the nation itself was tied up with alcohol a bit, but a strong anti alcohol streak developed relatively early in the nation's history, leading ultimately to the Prohibition movement after the Civil War.  Given as the early 19th Century was truly sodden, perhaps that's not a surprise.

Prohibition is often recalled today as a morals based campaign, but a concern for drinkers' health was a strong aspect of it.  Nonetheless, it was World War One, and the resultant concern that U.S. Doughboys, after having been exposed to French wine and French women would return as reprobates pushed it over the top.

Busting beer barrels in Prohibition.

One of the remarkable features of Prohibition in the US is that it not only was brief, 1919 to 1933, but it also immediately spawned efforts to repeal it.  No sooner had the country decided to ban alcohol in the name of morals and health, than people were buying it illegally and arguing for Prohibition to be repealed.  The health concerns seemingly forgotten.

Women were prominent in the temperance movement, and in the repeal movement as well.

The Great Depression followed by World War Two effectively put an end to temperance in the US for a long time, in spite of some county's remaining dry. By the early 1970s some states had dropped the drinking age down to the teens, such as Wyoming which had a drinking age of 19.

Following that, people became concerned once again about the health and social costs of drinking.  The Federal government sponsored an effort to get the states to raise the age up to 21, which all subsequently did, although highway safety was the main concern there. Still, the danger of excess consumption became increasingly known.

Then, starting at some point in the 1980s, the health news started to announce that may some drinking wasn't bad for you, in moderation.  Nobody seems to be able to define moderation, but it was noted that it seemed to be the butter consuming French had low heart disease rates.  So then it came to be asserted that perhaps a glass of red wine per day wasn't bad for you.  Ultimately it came to be asserted that perhaps a drink of about any alcoholic beverage per day wasn't bad.

Following that, however, was the inevitable counter.  In the UK the government really started to discourage drinking, in a nation that had a beer culture.  And this week, coming out of the UK, is the news that perhaps just two drinks per day, in the middle aged, would accelerate mental decline.  That amount, in men, is the same amount which previously had been in the safe category which you could consume per day out of a concern for your heart.

And all of this is, of course, just the major or popular stories of this type. At any one time, in the US, the latest fad diets are circulating around. Eat this, don't eat that, wait, don't eat this, eat that.  People leap on these things as the latest fad, whether their scientific based, or just slickly hawked.  It doesn't seem to dawn on a lot of people that they're eating a very unnatural diet that may be bad for them, and that countering with an extremely unnatural diet is likely not a very good idea.

Set in other terms, eating three meals a day out of boxes is probably a poor idea.  For that matter, three big meals a day may make sense for farmers and ranchers, but probably not for office workers.  Nonetheless, that's what a lot of people do. And then, when that has an inevitable impact, they go for some diet that might make sense for an ill rabbit, but not a human being.  If you are eating a series of meals that you prepare in a blender, you've lost sight of the fact that your forebearors were hunter gatherers, and biologically, so are you.

In its most extreme form, we have the think blanch, mostly white and urban, folks who have decided to go to war with nature and become vegans, a diet which ironically only a heavily industrialized society can support.  In a "self sustaining" natural environment, you'd be dead in about two weeks on that diet, as it requires industrial support to even exist.  Be that as it may, in that environment most people would come to their senses and be out slaughtering a buffalo in less than a week.  Still, it's interesting that we now have some people who are so afraid of the nature of their food, and of real nature, that they'd rather eat in a wholly fake manner.

At the same time, in the typical American fashion, we now have television channels dedicated to nothing but food.  And some that food would blimp you up in a big hurry.  Hosts go out to diners and survey the heaviest duty, most caloric, stuff imaginable.  And folks watch them do it.  Odd.

Truth be known, of course, nobody lives forever.  And sitting around in an office all day isn't really very good for you.  We no doubt have some dietary concerns, and nobody can realistically maintain that there's any benefit to some things, like smoking.  Don't go overboard on anything seems about as solid advice as anyone could really hope for.

Postscript

Something related to this, to chew the fat on.

Postscript II

Well, the current issue of Time has butter on the cover, with the words "Eat Butter".

I haven't read the article yet, but liking butter, and having never given it up, I'm pleased.

Understanding Iraq

The first thing a person looking at the civil war in Iraq needs to understand is that it isn't a real country.

 King Faisal of Iraq.  Born in Mecca in 1885, elected to the Ottoman parliament in 1913, practical leader of the Arab Revolt in the field during World War One, King of Syria in 1920 until French interest prevailed, and then King of Iraq.

Iraq is a creation of the British Empire.  That doesn't make it good, or bad, but it isn't a nation state.  A nation state, of course is a country (i.e., "state") where everyone in the country is part of the same nationality.  Not all countries are nation states. The US isn't.  Canada isn't. Australia isn't. But most are.  Germany is, for example, or France, Italy or Spain.

Imperial nations didn't draw borders, usually, based upon nationality, but upon convenience.  And that's how Iraq basically came about.

This is not to say that the region does not have an ancient history.  It certainly does.  It goes back to vast antiquity, and the region has played a part in every major event in the Middle East for all of recorded history.

But modern Iraq came about as a result of World War One.  The British took a region of the fallen Ottoman Empire that fell outside of Syria (which went to France) and outside of Transjordan (now Jordan), and out of that region administered by Saudi Arabia of the Emirs of Kuwait, and made a country out of it, with the capitol of that country being Baghdad. Over it, it placed a Hashamite king, a sort of consolation prize to the Hashamites who came from Mecca, but who lost the Arabian peninsula to the House of Saud, which the British Indian government backed while the British government, operating out of Cairo, backed the Hashamites. The Saudis, who spent most of World War One consolidating their their power, ended up with that instead, while the Hashamites, who were a family that stemmed from Mecca, ended up with what the British would give them, which turned out to be Transjordan and Iraq.  They'd wanted Syria, and briefly had it, but the French took that, based on a historical association with Syria.  The boundaries of the country were mostly unnatural, with perhaps the only natural one being the eastern boundary where the Arab population yielded to the Persian. The Persians and the Arabs generally dislike one another, even though the territory of what is now Iraq had given rise to the Shiite branch of Islam, the branch to which most Iranians adhere, but to which most Arabs do not.

King Faisal on left, dressed in a fashion we do not imagine for him, with his brother, the Emir of Transjordan.  Jordan remains a Hashamite kingdom to this day.

The Hashamite rule of Iraq was not a success, and in no small part this was because the country made little sense.  The north was one of the four countries which the stateless nation of the Kurds fell into. An ancient people with a strong central identity, they wanted no part of any country other than one they hoped to have themselves, a national aspiration opposed by Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Persia.  Shiites, who formed the majority in the Euphrates valley, did not share a religious identity with the Sunnis, who inhabit the desert west, as the two variants of Islam have very deep divides between the two.  The Sunnis inhabited the balance of the country, which just as easily could have been part of Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, with the inhabitants of those regions being no more or less loyal to any of those other regions.  In the north the country also had remaining populations of Assyrians, the founders of Syria who were and are a declining minority everywhere they are found.  An ancient population of Catholic Arabs are also found in the country.

It was British presence in one form or another that kept the country together.  Somewhat independent starting in 1932, the country actually appeared to tilt towards the Axis early in World War Two until the British invaded it.  After the war the monarchy fell to the fascistic Baath party in a coup in 1958.  The British in turn granted Kuwait Independence in 1961, forming a bone of contention with Baathist Iraq.  Kuwait was no more a real nation that Iraq, but it was ethnically homogeneous, making it more stable in any event.

Under the Baath Party regional differences in Iraq were violently suppressed, but as memorialized here as Holscher's Third Law of History, those differences never went away.  Indeed, during Saddam Hussein's reign there were uprising of various groups.  The Kurds never ceased striving for independence.  The "Marsh Arabs", Shiites of the Euphrates valley, also attempted an uprising following our defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War, when they acted upon the belief, which we did not discourage, that we'd come to their aid against Saddam Hussein.

The lid came off of all of this upon our invasion of Iraq following 9/11. The entire invasion was premised on the thesis that Iraq retained weapons of "mass destruction", a term coined in that era which oddly lumped generally nasty but ineffectual chemical weapons with truly horrific nuclear weapons, but the government was slow to disassociate Iraq with the Al Queda attack on the US, which Iraq was not responsible for..  By WMD, we meant chemical weapons, which Iraq was not to retain after its defeat in the first Guilf War.  It turned out, of course, that they didn't have any, or at least none could be found following our defeat of Iraq in the second Gulf War.  And as an added irony, the Sunni fundamentalist Al Queda regarded Hussein as a Communist, which he was not, and they therefore were opposed to him.

The invasion of Iraq, tremblingly done without an American declaration of war, left us in control of the country just as the internecine feuds were flamed by foreign Jihadist who entered the country to fight the US.  Often confused as one long war, the second Gulf War was actually two wars, a conventional war which we won against the Baathist regime, and a second one against irregular Islamic Jihadist. We won that one too, and then left the country a fragile, Shiite dominated, democracy.  That democracy did not want us there, and now it faces a rebellion it is ill prepared to put down.

Now a civil war has erupted, with the Sunni minority threatening to defeat the government of the Shiite majority.  It has every promise of turning into a true bloodbath as ancient rivalries and fears revive.  Its difficult at best to see how any democratic government can rule the country, and like King Faisal II, the best observation may be that "nobody can govern this country".  But do we dare ignore it?  The Sunni rebellion has close connections to a fanatic Sunni militia fighting in Syria for the recreation of a Sunni Caliphate, a sort of Islamic law empire.  It will not succeed in that goal, but that it's willing to struggle for it is something we cannot ignore.  Nor can we ignore that the present Iraqi government is not unfriendly to Iran, which as its own goals that do not squire with ours.

At the end of the day, we have to wonder if the best solution for Iraq wold be a world were there isn't one.  The country is a legal fiction, and in the north the Kurds are entitled to their own country, a result the Turks, Syrians and Iranians would not like.  In the west, the population would make as much sense being part of Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, if we felt comfortable with that result, which we have good reason not to be.  In the east, the country would likely remain, but how viable it would be is questionable.  And how much we are willing to invest to achieve that result, and how much we have already invested in the country, is a sobering thought.

Related Threads:

Understanding Syria.

The dreaded air conditioning season has arrived.

The time of year when the indoor temperature, because of the outdoor temperature, is refrigerated to the level at which I put a coat on when I'm outdoors, the rest of the year, has arrived.

The early summer cold, the result of going from -85F to 85F by stepping outdoors, can't be far behind.

The messed up legacy of colonialism.

It's really easy to dump on colonialism from our vantage in 2014, and not really fair either.  Americans in particular like to imagine themselves as an anti colonial power, not without quite a bit of justification, but we had our moments as well, and of course the entire westward expansion of the country was a type of internal colonialism, which we tend to forget.  So, I don't intend this to be one of those snotty "oh, how bad the Europeans were" type of posts.

 Iraqi army officers gathered to celebrate Iraq's entry into the League of Nations in 1932.

And, on that, I frankly don't know that it's possible to envision a world history that doesn't feature colonialism, and European colonialism in particular.  Consider the Scramble for Africa, the last great era of colonialism.  Is it really possible to imagine all the European powers sitting that one out?  And if even one was in it, didn't all the other activity make it inevitable?  So, in short, I don't want to be excessively critical.

I also don't want to be excessively sanctimonious about it either.  Most western nations that have colonial legacies have entered the "oh, how horrible we were" state of mind, but that isn't really a very useful or accurate record.  On the ground, in a lot of former colonial areas the influence of the colonial power is often mixed, and sometimes not really all that badly recalled.  In some very stable areas of the globe areas that were once colonies are now incredibly heavily influenced by lessons learned from the former colonial power and are in some instances better carriers of western values than countries in the west now are.  And in some areas, to our surprise, the former colonial period is looked back as a golden age.  A friend of mine with experience in Morocco once related to me how high in the Atlas mountains he was enthusiastically greeted by villagers who thought he was the advanced guard of a French colonial administration, decades after the French had left, and the French were hoping for their return.  And, as horrific as the early administration of King Leopold was early on, at least one National Geographic expedition in that country found villagers rushing out enthusiastically yelling "The Belgians are back!"  Things can get confusing out there.

What brings this up, however, is the mess sometimes created when former colonial powers tried population transfers (such as the Chinese are still doing now) or drew boundaries very badly.

In recent weeks we've seen the struggle in Ukraine over territory, as Russian ethnics attempt to take parts of that country out of Ukraine and back into Russia. This is all a legacy of the Russians populating some areas of their empire with ethnic Russians and also redrawing the maps after World War Two.  This left a demographic mess that can't get sorted out well. Ukraine has to try to keep what it has, and Russia, never having gotten over its having been an imperial nation, supports its fellow ethnic Russians in their efforts to get out, if indeed it doesn't hope for domination of Ukraine.  The Tartars, in Crimea, find themselves outnumbered by everyone in their native lands.  This can't be sorted out well by any means, other than perhaps telling the ethnic Russians they'll just have to get used to it.  An interesting aspect of this, however, is that there's current combat between two distinct peoples based upon lines drawn in colonial times by one, and by cultural differences that might appear to be slight from the casual observer, but in fact which are very deep.*

Ukranian girl in a former concentration camp, in Austria, May, 1945.

A worse situation is brewing in Iraq, which in the past several days has slipped into a religious and ethnic civil war.  Making the situation all the worse, Iraq isn't a real nation to start with, but  British creation.  In some ways, Iraq was what was left over of the Ottoman Empire after you ran it out to the East.  The deserty part in the west of the country was thinly populated (and still is) and was Sunni, falling into the Bedouin cultural region.  The agricultural part to the East was Shiite, indeed it's critical to the Shiia world view for historical reasons, but still Arab (i.e., not Persian).  The north is Kurdish.

 Youthful Iraqi fascists gather, in 1932, so celebrate Iraq's entry into the League of Nations.  An unfortunate aspect of Middle Eastern history is that secular movements, which have occasionally have been very strong, have also been anti democratic.  Communist and Baathist have both been strong at various points in Iraq's history, making up about the only non religious sectarian political parties in the country, a common feature of politics in the region.

The gulf between the Sunnis and the Shiias is vast, and in terms of religious differences it doesn't do them justice, really, to lump them all in as Moslems.  Their views are considerably different on some critical matters, and it's nearly impossible for them to regard each other charitably.  The northern part of the country isn't culturally Arab at all, a the Kurds are a separate people who really deserve their own country.

Iraq, of course, is disintegrating before our eyes.  As we fought a war to depose a strongman who kept the country together, by suppressing Islam in general and any individual national impulses as well, it's now our responsibility to some degree.  But the country really isn't.  In an ideal world, letting the Kurds set up their own nation, and separating the two competing branches of Islam into separate states, would occur, but that probably can't without dire implications.  Of course, the implications of whatever occurs, at this point, are dire.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*.Ukraine is a Slavic nation that's traditionally looked west, like Poland to which it has a close ethnic connection.  More European that Russians, they are also grouped into two separate Eastern churches in terms of religion, one being the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the other being the Ukrainian Catholic Church, neither of which, of course, is the Russian Orthodox Church.  World War One presented them with an opportunity to leave Russia, which they did, but resulting strife with Poland and Russian resulted into its reincorporation and a subsequent heavy handed Soviet repressive period which included mass starvation as a tool.  A second chance at independence was seized by some Ukrainians during World War Two during which they viewed the Germans as an ally of convenience.  A guerrilla war that followed the reappearance of the Red Army lasted into the late 1940s.

Iraq

The Big Picture: The Olympics

The Big Speech: The Magna Carta

1215  King John put his seal to the Magna Carta, which in its original version, stated:

KNOW THAT BEFORE GOD, for the health of our soul and those of our ancestors and heirs, to the honour of God, the exaltation of the holy Church, and the better ordering of our kingdom, at the advice of our reverend fathers Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and cardinal of the holy Roman Church, Henry archbishop of Dublin, William bishop of London, Peter bishop of Winchester, Jocelin bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh bishop of Lincoln, Walter Bishop of Worcester, William bishop of Coventry, Benedict bishop of Rochester, Master Pandulf subdeacon and member of the papal household, Brother Aymeric master of the knighthood of the Temple in England, William Marshal earl of Pembroke, William earl of Salisbury, William earl of Warren, William earl of Arundel, Alan de Galloway constable of Scotland, Warin Fitz Gerald, Peter Fitz Herbert, Hubert de Burgh seneschal of Poitou, Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip Daubeny, Robert de Roppeley, John Marshal, John Fitz Hugh, and other loyal subjects:

(1) FIRST, THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

TO ALL FREE MEN OF OUR KINGDOM we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs:

(2) If any earl, baron, or other person that holds lands directly of the Crown, for military service, shall die, and at his death his heir shall be of full age and owe a `relief', the heir shall have his inheritance on payment of the ancient scale of `relief'. That is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl shall pay £100 for the entire earl's barony, the heir or heirs of a knight l00s. at most for the entire knight's `fee', and any man that owes less shall pay less, in accordance with the ancient usage of `fees'

(3) But if the heir of such a person is under age and a ward, when he comes of age he shall have his inheritance without `relief' or fine.

(4) The guardian of the land of an heir who is under age shall take from it only reasonable revenues, customary dues, and feudal services. He shall do this without destruction or damage to men or property. If we have given the guardianship of the land to a sheriff, or to any person answerable to us for the revenues, and he commits destruction or damage, we will exact compensation from him, and the land shall be entrusted to two worthy and prudent men of the same `fee', who shall be answerable to us for the revenues, or to the person to whom we have assigned them. If we have given or sold to anyone the guardianship of such land, and he causes destruction or damage, he shall lose the guardianship of it, and it shall be handed over to two worthy and prudent men of the same `fee', who shall be similarly answerable to us.

(5) For so long as a guardian has guardianship of such land, he shall maintain the houses, parks, fish preserves, ponds, mills, and everything else pertaining to it, from the revenues of the land itself. When the heir comes of age, he shall restore the whole land to him, stocked with plough teams and such implements of husbandry as the season demands and the revenues from the land can reasonably bear.

(6) Heirs may be given in marriage, but not to someone of lower social standing. Before a marriage takes place, it shall be' made known to the heir's next-of-kin.

(7) At her husband's death, a widow may have her marriage portion and inheritance at once and without trouble. She shall pay nothing for her dower, marriage portion, or any inheritance that she and her husband held jointly on the day of his death. She may remain in her husband's house for forty days after his death, and within this period her dower shall be assigned to her.

(8) No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she wishes to remain without a husband. But she must give security that she will not marry without royal consent, if she holds her lands of the Crown, or without the consent of whatever other lord she may hold them of.

(9) Neither we nor our officials will seize any land or rent in payment of a debt, so long as the debtor has movable goods sufficient to discharge the debt. A debtor's sureties shall not be distrained upon so long as the debtor himself can discharge his debt. If, for lack of means, the debtor is unable to discharge his debt, his sureties shall be answerable for it. If they so desire, they may have the debtor's lands and rents until they have received satisfaction for the debt that they paid for him, unless the debtor can show that he has settled his obligations to them.

(10) If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age, irrespective of whom he holds his lands. If such a debt falls into the hands of the Crown, it will take nothing except the principal sum specified in the bond.

(11) If a man dies owing money to Jews, his wife may have her dower and pay nothing towards the debt from it. If he leaves children that are under age, their needs may also be provided for on a scale appropriate to the size of his holding of lands. The debt is to be paid out of the residue, reserving the service due to his feudal lords. Debts owed to persons other than Jews are to be dealt with similarly.

(12) No `scutage' or `aid' may be levied in our kingdom without its general consent, unless it is for the ransom of our person, to make our eldest son a knight, and (once) to marry our eldest daughter. For these purposes ouly a reasonable `aid' may be levied. `Aids' from the city of London are to be treated similarly.

(13) The city of London shall enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water. We also will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs.

(14) To obtain the general consent of the realm for the assessment of an `aid' - except in the three cases specified above - or a `scutage', we will cause the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons to be summoned individually by letter. To those who hold lands directly of us we will cause a general summons to be issued, through the sheriffs and other officials, to come together on a fixed day (of which at least forty days notice shall be given) and at a fixed place. In all letters of summons, the cause of the summons will be stated. When a summons has been issued, the business appointed for the day shall go forward in accordance with the resolution of those present, even if not all those who were summoned have appeared.

(15) In future we will allow no one to levy an `aid' from his free men, except to ransom his person, to make his eldest son a knight, and (once) to marry his eldest daughter. For these purposes only a reasonable `aid' may be levied.

(16) No man shall be forced to perform more service for a knight's `fee', or other free holding of land, than is due from it.

(17) Ordinary lawsuits shall not follow the royal court around, but shall be held in a fixed place.

(18) Inquests of novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor, and darrein presentment shall be taken only in their proper county court. We ourselves, or in our absence abroad our chief justice, will send two justices to each county four times a year, and these justices, with four knights of the county elected by the county itself, shall hold the assizes in the county court, on the day and in the place where the court meets.

(19) If any assizes cannot be taken on the day of the county court, as many knights and freeholders shall afterwards remain behind, of those who have attended the court, as will suffice for the administration of justice, having regard to the volume of business to be done.

(20) For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a husbandman the implements of his husbandry, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court. None of these fines shall be imposed except by the assessment on oath of reputable men of the neighbourhood.

(21) Earls and barons shall be fined only by their equals, and in proportion to the gravity of their offence.

(22) A fine imposed upon the lay property of a clerk in holy orders shall be assessed upon the same principles, without reference to the value of his ecclesiastical benefice.

(23) No town or person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to do so.

(24) No sheriff, constable, coroners, or other royal officials are to hold lawsuits that should be held by the royal justices.

(25) Every county, hundred, wapentake, and tithing shall remain at its ancient rent, without increase, except the royal demesne manors.

(26) If at the death of a man who holds a lay `fee' of the Crown, a sheriff or royal official produces royal letters patent of summons for a debt due to the Crown, it shall be lawful for them to seize and list movable goods found in the lay `fee' of the dead man to the value of the debt, as assessed by worthy men. Nothing shall be removed until the whole debt is paid, when the residue shall be given over to the executors to carry out the dead man s will. If no debt is due to the Crown, all the movable goods shall be regarded as the property of the dead man, except the reasonable shares of his wife and children.

(27) If a free man dies intestate, his movable goods are to be distributed by his next-of-kin and friends, under the supervision of the Church. The rights of his debtors are to be preserved.

(28) No constable or other royal official shall take corn or other movable goods from any man without immediate payment, unless the seller voluntarily offers postponement of this.

(29) No constable may compel a knight to pay money for castle-guard if the knight is willing to undertake the guard in person, or with reasonable excuse to supply some other fit man to do it. A knight taken or sent on military service shall be excused from castle-guard for the period of this servlce.

(30) No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or carts for transport from any free man, without his consent.

(31) Neither we nor any royal official will take wood for our castle, or for any other purpose, without the consent of the owner.

(32) We will not keep the lands of people convicted of felony in our hand for longer than a year and a day, after which they shall be returned to the lords of the `fees' concerned.

(33) All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.

(34) The writ called precipe shall not in future be issued to anyone in respect of any holding of land, if a free man could thereby be deprived of the right of trial in his own lord's court.

(35) There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard width of dyed cloth, russett, and haberject, namely two ells within the selvedges. Weights are to be standardised similarly.

(36) In future nothing shall be paid or accepted for the issue of a writ of inquisition of life or limbs. It shall be given gratis, and not refused.

(37) If a man holds land of the Crown by `fee-farm', `socage', or `burgage', and also holds land of someone else for knight's service, we will not have guardianship of his heir, nor of the land that belongs to the other person's `fee', by virtue of the `fee-farm', `socage', or `burgage', unless the `fee-farm' owes knight's service. We will not have the guardianship of a man's heir, or of land that he holds of someone else, by reason of any small property that he may hold of the Crown for a service of knives, arrows, or the like.

(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

(41) All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. This, however, does not apply in time of war to merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without injury to their persons or property, until we or our chief justice have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country at war with us. If our own merchants are safe they shall be safe too.

(42) In future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to our kingdom unharmed and without fear, by land or water, preserving his allegiance to us, except in time of war, for some short period, for the common benefit of the realm. People that have been imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law of the land, people from a country that is at war with us, and merchants - who shall be dealt with as stated above - are excepted from this provision.

(43) If a man holds lands of any `escheat' such as the `honour' of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other `escheats' in our hand that are baronies, at his death his heir shall give us only the `relief' and service that he would have made to the baron, had the barony been in the baron's hand. We will hold the `escheat' in the same manner as the baron held it.

(44) People who live outside the forest need not in future appear before the royal justices of the forest in answer to general summonses, unless they are actually involved in proceedings or are sureties for someone who has been seized for a forest offence.

(45) We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well.

(46) All barons who have founded abbeys, and have charters of English kings or ancient tenure as evidence of this, may have guardianship of them when there is no abbot, as is their due.

(47) All forests that have been created in our reign shall at once be disafforested. River-banks that have been enclosed in our reign shall be treated similarly.

(48) All evil customs relating to forests and warrens, foresters, warreners, sheriffs and their servants, or river-banks and their wardens, are at once to be investigated in every county by twelve sworn knights of the county, and within forty days of their enquiry the evil customs are to be abolished completely and irrevocably. But we, or our chief justice if we are not in England, are first to be informed.

(49) We will at once return all hostages and charters delivered up to us by Englishmen as security for peace or for loyal service.

(50) We will remove completely from their offices the kinsmen of Gerard de Athée, and in future they shall hold no offices in England. The people in question are Engelard de Cigogné', Peter, Guy, and Andrew de Chanceaux, Guy de Cigogné, Geoffrey de Martigny and his brothers, Philip Marc and his brothers, with Geoffrey his nephew, and all their followers.

(51) As soon as peace is restored, we will remove from the kingdom all the foreign knights, bowmen, their attendants, and the mercenaries that have come to it, to its harm, with horses and arms.

(52) To any man whom we have deprived or dispossessed of lands, castles, liberties, or rights, without the lawful judgement of his equals, we will at once restore these. In cases of dispute the matter shall be resolved by the judgement of the twenty-five barons referred to below in the clause for securing the peace (§ 61). In cases, however, where a man was deprived or dispossessed of something without the lawful judgement of his equals by our father King Henry or our brother King Richard, and it remains in our hands or is held by others under our warranty, we shall have respite for the period commonly allowed to Crusaders, unless a lawsuit had been begun, or an enquiry had been made at our order, before we took the Cross as a Crusader. On our return from the Crusade, or if we abandon it, we will at once render justice in full.

(53) We shall have similar respite in rendering justice in connexion with forests that are to be disafforested, or to remain forests, when these were first a-orested by our father Henry or our brother Richard; with the guardianship of lands in another person's `fee', when we have hitherto had this by virtue of a `fee' held of us for knight's service by a third party; and with abbeys founded in another person's `fee', in which the lord of the `fee' claims to own a right. On our return from the Crusade, or if we abandon it, we will at once do full justice to complaints about these matters.

(54) No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman for the death of any person except her husband.

(55) All fines that have been given to us unjustiy and against the law of the land, and all fines that we have exacted unjustly, shall be entirely remitted or the matter decided by a majority judgement of the twenty-five barons referred to below in the clause for securing the peace (§ 61) together with Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, if he can be present, and such others as he wishes to bring with him. If the archbishop cannot be present, proceedings shall continue without him, provided that if any of the twenty-five barons has been involved in a similar suit himself, his judgement shall be set aside, and someone else chosen and sworn in his place, as a substitute for the single occasion, by the rest of the twenty-five.

(56) If we have deprived or dispossessed any Welshmen of lands, liberties, or anything else in England or in Wales, without the lawful judgement of their equals, these are at once to be returned to them. A dispute on this point shall be determined in the Marches by the judgement of equals. English law shall apply to holdings of land in England, Welsh law to those in Wales, and the law of the Marches to those in the Marches. The Welsh shall treat us and ours in the same way.

(57) In cases where a Welshman was deprived or dispossessed of anything, without the lawful judgement of his equals, by our father King Henry or our brother King Richard, and it remains in our hands or is held by others under our warranty, we shall have respite for the period commonly allowed to Crusaders, unless a lawsuit had been begun, or an enquiry had been made at our order, before we took the Cross as a Crusader. But on our return from the Crusade, or if we abandon it, we will at once do full justice according to the laws of Wales and the said regions.

(58) We will at once return the son of Llywelyn, all Welsh hostages, and the charters delivered to us as security for the peace.

(59) With regard to the return of the sisters and hostages of Alexander, king of Scotland, his liberties and his rights, we will treat him in the same way as our other barons of England, unless it appears from the charters that we hold from his father William, formerly king of Scotland, that he should be treated otherwise. This matter shall be resolved by the judgement of his equals in our court.

(60) All these customs and liberties that we have granted shall be observed in our kingdom in so far as concerns our own relations with our subjects. Let all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or laymen, observe them similarly in their relations with their own men.

(61) SINCE WE HAVE GRANTED ALL THESE THINGS for God, for the better ordering of our kingdom, and to allay the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, and since we desire that they shall be enjoyed in their entirety, with lasting strength, for ever, we give and grant to the barons the following security:

    The barons shall elect twenty-five of their number to keep, and cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.

    If we, our chief justice, our officials, or any of our servants offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence is made known to four of the said twenty-five barons, they shall come to us - or in our absence from the kingdom to the chief justice - to declare it and claim immediate redress. If we, or in our absence abroad the chiefjustice, make no redress within forty days, reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or to him, the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children, until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon. Having secured the redress, they may then resume their normal obedience to us.

    Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command.

    If-one of the twenty-five barons dies or leaves the country, or is prevented in any other way from discharging his duties, the rest of them shall choose another baron in his place, at their discretion, who shall be duly sworn in as they were.

    In the event of disagreement among the twenty-five barons on any matter referred to them for decision, the verdict of the majority present shall have the same validity as a unanimous verdict of the whole twenty-five, whether these were all present or some of those summoned were unwilling or unable to appear.

    The twenty-five barons shall swear to obey all the above articles faithfully, and shall cause them to be obeyed by others to the best of their power.

    We will not seek to procure from anyone, either by our own efforts or those of a third party, anything by which any part of these concessions or liberties might be revoked or diminished. Should such a thing be procured, it shall be null and void and we will at no time make use of it, either ourselves or through a third party.

(62) We have remitted and pardoned fully to all men any ill-will, hurt, or grudges that have arisen between us and our subjects, whether clergy or laymen, since the beginning of the dispute. We have in addition remitted fully, and for our own part have also pardoned, to all clergy and laymen any offences committed as a result of the said dispute between Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign and the restoration of peace.

In addition we have caused letters patent to be made for the barons, bearing witness to this security and to the concessions set out above, over the seals of Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, Henry archbishop of Dublin, the other bishops named above, and Master Pandulf.

(63) IT IS ACCORDINGLY OUR WISH AND COMMAND that the English Church shall be free, and that men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fulness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places for ever.

Both we and the barons have sworn that all this shall be observed in good faith and without deceit. Witness the above mentioned people and many others.

Given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign.

Learning A New Skill Works Best To Keep Your Brain Sharp : Shots - Health News : NPR

Learning A New Skill Works Best To Keep Your Brain Sharp : Shots - Health News : NPR

Good stuff to know, and something that seems to be increasingly supported by the evidence.  Indeed, it's also note that people with jobs that involve difficult mental problems exhibit this as well.

Sunday, June 14, 1914. Flag Day

Vice President Marshall delivering a Flag Day address, June 14, 1914.

Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Leopold Berchtold released a memo suggesting the end of Serbia as a nation was necessary to preserve the balance of power in the Balkans.

Oh, oh.

Order was restored in Italy after Red Week.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, June 13, 1914. Fresh Paint.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Art, Austro Hungaria, Balkans, France, Germany, Labor unrest, Women

Friday Farming: Victory Garden in railyard.

Saturday, June 13, 1914. Fresh Paint.

Votes for mothers!  From a suffragist newspaper of June 13, 1914.

Riots broke out during a Miners Day Parade in Butte, Montana, over union loyalties.

Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany concluded his visit with Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The subject of their meeting was the balance of power in the Balkans, with the Archduke was scheduled later that month to visit military expansion efforts in the region.

Oh, oh.

René Viviani was appointed 81st Prime Minister of France.

Last prior edition:

Friday, June 12, 1914. Greeks murdered in Anatolia.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Education, France, French Empire, Greek Genocide, Morocco, Ottoman Empire, Politics, Turkey, University of Wyoming, Wyoming, Zaian War

Russo-Japanese War: Human Bullets | 1870 to 1918

Russo-Japanese War: Human Bullets | 1870 to 1918

Modern Technology and the Public Building

Recently, on our blog about courthouses, I posted an item on the Townsend Justice Center, which is the courthouse for Natrona County Wyoming.  In that photo I posted a picture of a circuit court courtroom.

I should note that the circuit court is much, much, smaller than the district court courtrooms in the same courthouse.  As I'm set to be a little critical of those courtrooms, I want to make that plain.  The district court courtrooms are much larger.

Anyhow, one of the recent features of public buildings has been the incorporation of a lot of new technology into them.  I'm not wholly opposed to this, and regard it as inevitable, but one thing that I think people really need to keep in mind about this is that certain types of public buildings reflect design lessons learned over centuries, to address their specific functions, and incorporation of technology that's only a couple of decades old, or maybe even less than that, isn't necessarily going to improve their function or even really work very well.

 

 The Niobrara County Courthouse in Lusk Wyoming.  This old courthouse has one large courtroom, typical of older courthouses.  While heating and air conditioning were lacking in effectiveness the last time I was in the courthouse, the big courtroom does nicely accommodate projected voices.  The thread on this blog from 2009 featuring this courthouse remains a freakishly popular one here.

To start with, I'll note audio systems. This is a routine feature of almost any modern building where a person is expected to give an address of any kind, but by the same token almost any building built prior to the mid 20th Century lacked one.  If a building was expected to have public speakers, such as a church or a courtroom, it was built accordingly, and that worked just fine.

Churches are a particularly good example of this, as some churches, including very old churches, are huge.  The person at the ambo had to be able to address the person in the back as effectively as the front, and without yelling. While some no doubt had problems doing that, most didn't, and that's simply because people in that role learned how to project their voices, and were aided in that by the architecture of the building's interior.

 

 Interior of the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe in Dallas Texas.  Built in 1902, this church has classic architecture which wold have allowed voices to carry to the back of the church quite easily.

Courtrooms worked the same way, although the lawyer and court didn't really have to address the entire audience in the gallery, except during voir dire, but just the jury.  Still, they had to do that, and learned how to speak effectively in order to do so.

All of this is still true, but now audio systems have been incorporated to achieve that. The problem is that they aren't really always needed, and when incorporated into older buildings you get weird results on occasion, such as cutting in and out, voices that are way too loud, or distortion. Still, people have become so used to the systems they never simply dispense with them, but endure the glitches and press on.

Audio is one thing, but a bigger thing is becoming the incorporation of computer and visual systems.  People can be absolutely fascinated with them.  So we now see buildings with all sort of projectors, monitors, and the like.

One of the most distracting examples of this I've seen was in a church in Ft. Collins, Colorado, in which some sort of projector was used to flash poorly drawn images apparently depicting the gospels being read as part of the readings for that Sunday.  It was distracting, and not really well done. The building itself was fairly poorly constructed for public address at that.

But its in courtrooms where this has become really pronounced, and not really to uniformly good results.

The courtrooms of Wyoming's Seventh Judicial District are a good example.  From some point in the 1930s, up until relatively recently, district courts used a Depression Era courthouse. That building featured a very large single courtroom, if a very tiny axillary courtroom is not considered.  Over time, however, the existing makeup of the court became simply too small, as with three district court judges, and one courtroom, something was clearly needed.  The original purpose was to remodel the beautiful 1930s vintage courthouse, but a bond measure to do that was defeated. So in the end the State ended up funding the remodeling of the old Townsend Hotel across the street from the old courthouse.

 

 The Depression Era Natrona County Courthouse, now no longer used for court purposes.

The Townsend Hotel had been unoccupied for a couple of decades at the time, and something really needed to be done. The remodel is really something, and the entire facility is very impressive inside, even if the outside looks a lot like a 1920s vintage hotel.  But the courtrooms in it drive me nuts.

The Townsend Justice Center, the remodeled Townsend Hotel.

The courtrooms themselves are beautiful really. Not as pretty as the old big courtroom in the old courthouse, but still, they're really nice.  Nobody could rationally complain about their appearance.  But up in front of the bar, they're uncomfortable.

The problem is that they've been wired to the nth degree for every sort of electronic device going.  Each juror has their own television monitor, a huge television monitor hangs from the ceiling.  All the counsel tables are wired so that counsel can plug his computer in and run the monitors.

That all sounds great, but what that means is that tables are fixed in place.  And not only are they fixed in place, they're small.  In contrast, counsel tables in older courtrooms are capable of being moved, and are also gigantic as a rule.

That may sound minor, but its not.  In a typical multi day trial, its impossible in some modern courtrooms to effectively seat more than one attorney, or an attorney and a paralegal, and the client.  No small matter. And in any multi day trial, no matter how high tech the lawyers may be, there are boxes and boxes of material that must go somewhere, and hard paper exhibits.  Without the ability to move tables, join tables, and rearrange, the ability to actually operate in the courtroom is impaired.

Circuit (not District) courtroom in the Seventh Judicial District.

It is the case, undoubtedly, that the ability to present a case electronically can really enhance a presentation, but it can distract also.  In almost every instance of extensive courtroom technology being used for a presentation that I've seen, somebody screwed it up.  I've seen family photos presented for evidence, and a lawyer sort through photos that included some that were somewhat questionable in nature (good thing to keep off your legal computer, I'd think), and a person have to go back and forth and back and forth.  And I've also found that a fair number of attorneys who are really comfortable with electronics are no longer comfortable with the court's electronics, so they pack in their own, adding to the enormous assortment of stuff in the courtroom.

None of this is to suggest that this should all be ripped out of the courtroom, and even if I argued for that, it wouldn't happen anyhow.  But, rather, a person needs to be careful.  Electronics aren't the end all and be all of presentation, and to some degree their diminishing the ability to effectively present in some circumstances, while greatly enhancing it in others.  It's one more tool.  But when things are built to accept the new tools, perhaps the reason for the old construction should be carefully recalled at the same time.