Impersonal

For the longest time, I always felt giving gift cards or actual money to someone as a celebratory gift (birthday, Christmas, Arbor Day, etc.) was lacking any sort of personality. Essentially it said, "I don't know you well enough to find something you'd like, so go use this to buy your groceries this week." Oddly, I generally don't mind receiving gift cards - my birthday this year was almost dominated by them outside of my household. The WalMart card my father got me went towards discount gas for a few weeks, my copy of Burnout Revenge is thanks to the Best Buy cards from my mother, and a couple of books I've been wanting is stacked curtesy of the Border's card from my sister.

Every so often, I'll give a gift card to someone who I think really could use the help with day-to-day expenditures. Everyone has rough patches in their life, and you can pretend to be inconsiderate to save their pride. If that makes any sense, you're probably in the same boat as I am. Sometimes I'll give a very specific gift card - AMC movie theaters used to do a 'movie night for two' package that was redeemable for two movie tickets and some concessions. I gave that to my sister shortly after the birth of their first child - essentially a sponsored date night for people who could use a night out.

So I find myself about to give someone cash for their birthday so that they can buy what they want at a convention this weekend. It feels so impersonal - I'd much rather give them a dust collector themed to one of their favorite things. The logic of the situation clearly favors the cash.

Oy. I get wrapped up in some of the most mundane subjects. Lets not talk about the fact that I essentially walked out of work two hours early in aggrevation yesterday, lets talk about a gift-giving hangup.

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Link of the Moment: Need a unique gift? Why not buy someone a title? I bet your uncle would love to call himself Viscount Bubba!

Evidence

Just a pondering I had on the way to work today:

Do procedural television shows like CSI bias real-world jurors in favor of criminals?

I think most people who think about it can agree that CSI (and other shows with similar flavor) is unrealistic. Every week, some forensic conundrum is solved and the criminal determined without a doubt. Real world forensic departments would love to have a track record like that. We also know that this style of television is extremely popular with the masses - CSI regularly appears in the top Neilson ratings, typically only beat out by popular reality shows or sports events.

But I wonder if these perfect forensic teams are ruining juror impartiality. Do they now rely on the technology to eliminate the shadow of a doubt? If there isn't any DNA evidence to match, does the case fall flat? If nobody was able to recreate the type of weapon used to break the skull 'just so', does the murderer walk free? Life isn't as black and white or perfect as television.

Or do I just not have enough faith in my fellow citizens' ability to think critically?

Anyway, hadn't posted in a while, and this was just something to pass the time in the car.

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Link of the Moment: Did you ever make your own kaleidoscope? Would you like to?