Is Vedic Astrology Based On Vedas?

The curriculum prescribed in my school days had a "Varaha Mihira's" story. There is no need to rehash it other than as establishing the credibility of vedic astrology in predicting far ahead of ensuing events, including life and death. The hindu mindset that astrologers can foretell what the planets have conspired goes deeper than grand canyon. The modern astrologers use astrophysics, cosmology and even quantum physics to justify their claims.

The key information vedic astrology needs is called "lagnam" which refers to the Zodiac Sign rising on the Eastern horizon at the time of a person's birth. It is significant in any type of astrology as it represents the entry point into an individual's life and is used to determine various astrological aspects. A day is divided into 12 lagnas, each lasting two hours, and a person's lagnam is the one they are born under.

Needless to say the accuracy of time of birth is crucial in vedic astrology. It need not be the case in sun or moon-based astrology. It is not clear how to take into account international time zones and datelines, not to mention the latitude and longitudinal information at the time of birth. I think vedic astrology is applicable to all those born in Bharatavarsha, not necessarily what the "hindutva" people say "Akhanda Bharat".

There are two kinds of vedic astrologers: (a) those who create the lagnam for a newborn and give the major milestones as the child progressed to adulthood; back in the olden days, before cesarean births became popular to get over the time paradox, with high infant mortality rate, they performed jataka karma; (b) those who predicted the course of a nation, kingdom or anything beyond; these days we see them appearing on TV and internet; this is one way for astrologers to insert themselves into macrocosm and claim to fame in the grist of election cycles.

With regard to the vedic astrology, one might wonder if it is based on vedas; if so, did vedas predict the future of mankind including the minutiae of a man or woman's life? The obvious answer is no because if they did, we wouldn't need itihasas and puranas describing the avataras of Sri Maha Vishnu, the war fought in Kurukshetra as per the epic Maha Bharata and most of all the Ramayana. Vedas mention puranas only in the context of Brahmanas. Many think the astrologers in the bygone days hijacked the passing mention of puranas in vedas to concoct the term vedic astrology.

Sticking to vedic astrology, what is it that parents of a newborn are looking for? The simple answer is Raja Yoga because every parent wants their child to achieve the highest success the ancient people aspired for. Even devatas are desirous of the position of their ruler Indra. Mortals have to do with the trappings of an elected office or a leadership role in the society, given that the kings were crowned by dynastic succession.

The vedic astrologers have a biographic template where they fill in the details of the planetary movements and their impact on the "native". For example, a native who suffers under the influence of sani/saturn early on in life is likely to enjoy the munificence of budha/jupiter later in life. The question then is how long before the onset of budha's munificence? For someone like Adi Sankaracharya, who passed away in his 30's, the budha's influence had been there forever, perhaps carried over by the karma phala in his previous birth. Similarly an artist's work appreciates much after his demise and names such as Ravi Varma, Michael Angelo, Jakkana et al. remind us of their accomplishments for as long as our civilization lasts. It is another matter they might have died penniless or in ignominy.

Going back to Raja Yoga, it seems to be the one to seek for a hopeful parent, but for the native it is nothing but immortality which is yet another trapping for the rich and powerful who are trying to transmigrate to another planet or in search of elixir/amruta using all scientific means. Kings in the olden days engraved their names and good deeds on stone in their quest for immortality. This tradition continued to this day when elected people erect statues and marble stones with their names and so on. For the sages who knew very well that all things born must die one day, samadhi is most covetous.

In the category of immortals we have Veera Brahmam who prognosticated the major events in Kali yuga; a Bulgarian called Baba Vanga who prophecized about politics, natural disasters, wars and even the end of the world; besides, any number of prophets in biblical times.

In sum, parents who believe in vedic astrology, implying astrology based on vedas, should take comfort in knowing that their child's arrival on earth is predestined by the paramatma who loves all no matter how they end up in one life. So even if they aren't as successful in this life, the benevolent god will give another life to fulfill their wishes. As for sun/moon astrology and horoscopes predicting ephemeral matters, enjoy while it lasts!

Regards

Why Texas Instruments' Calculators Don't Have a Genius Button?

TI has been in India since 1985 and a pioneer of calculators we grew up with which is just a sliver of their overall product line up that includes Analog Semiconductors, Embedded Processors, Microcontrollers, Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), Power Management Chips. Not exactly a who's-who list to be excited about. But their calculators made the lives of students, traders, professionals, etc. simpler. In the Indian context, a store may not have a computer, but always has a calculator. Then came Casio watches with a calculator but they didn't make a big splash. HP introduced calculators where the students could program a series of steps such as the Runge-Kutta method in numerical analysis. They even sold pre-programmed chips that could be inserted into their calculators. I don't think the evolution of calculators went much farther.

You see why TI calculators didn't have a Genius button? It's because they are Clairvoyant, beyond mere genius. You can win competing with a genius, but a clairvoyant is beyond oracle, ESP and what have you. Most importantly a clairvoyant is humble. In the case of TI, they could have sold their calculators for any price, but they made a fair mark up as there was no expensive supply chain where outsourced parts -- bits and pieces of the hardware--were required. Everything was made in-house except for the India connection.

So what did India contribute to the TI calculator? The obvious answer is software. But what kind of software? You see in the '90s the Presidents of the USA were talking about digital-divide, like haves and havenots in the context of access to information. TI's calculators were handy but don't fit the agenda. Besides, many techies considered them as analog. So the real battle is between analog vs. digital. To understand the difference let's do a Schrodinger cat experiment that is contrived to elaborate on this. You place your cat inside a box and close the lid. You wait for a few minutes and I ask "What is the cat doing now? " If you are digital, you would answer it as "The cat is either dead or alive". Whereas if you are analog you would reply "The cat could be sleeping, licking its paws, rolling on its back and so on". As you can infer, the possibilities with analog are endless.

Given the versatility of analog devices that TI pioneered, why are we using digital computers, digital-this or digital-that? The Chinese found an answer to this conundrum when they made a breakthrough in analog computing. Going back to the cat experiment, your analog response lacked specificity by enumerating many possibilities that would throw someone to tizzy. On the other hand, the digital response is limited to two possibilities with 50% accuracy each. If you bring in probability the analog response could be refined as: the cat is licking its paws with a 0.2 probability, rolling on its back with a 0.1 probability, etc. The issue now, as a mathematician would say, all the probabilities should add up to 1 or unity. Only a clairvoyant knows the correct answer in this case.

But wait, aren't we thinking just like the analogues? If we are digitalists we would only see black and white and nothing in between. We see a variety of shades, so we are not digitalists. Then how come digital computers don't have a problem in displaying shades between black and white? To figure this out we have to ask the geniuses who are called Neurologists if the digital devices have true colors because those of us not color blind ascribe it to them?

At this point, I take a short cut and give one possible answer: it is very likely our brain operates like a digital device and our mind is able to convert it to analog information. So we need both digital and analog to carry out thinking. Going back to what the Chinese did recently, they came up with an analog device that is more energy efficient, fairly accurate and likely cheaper to manufacture than an equivalent digital device.

Imagine you are in a farmer's market in India. The farmer has an analog calculator and you are carrying a digital calculator. If you ask the price of his produce, the farmer comes up with a number. You punch in the number into your calculator and think it is going to be expensive. So you decide to bargain. Because the farmer is holding an analog calculator, he will quote a price "in the ballpark" of what you might be willing to pay. At this stage you can throw away your digital calculator and make the purchase or walk away with your prized possession. Wait, there is another possibility: you can thank the farmer for his willingness to play along.

A genius like Sakuntala Devi might say you are wasting your time by wavering between analog and digital. The crux is learning to count, multiply and divide from a master. You are making your god-given brain lazy by not putting it to good use. You see folks, the human computer, Sakuntal Devi, is not just a genius, but also clairvoyant when applied to AI. She didn't have to change, but we all have to find other uses for our brain/mind that is freed up from cumbersome problem-solving because of TI.

Regards

Shock, Awe and Dumbfound

When William Shockley and his awesome team announced a transistor back in 1947, essentially an on/off electronic switch, much of the world had been tuning to Marconi's (1874) radios for news. It took five more years to commercialize transistor-based radios. I remember my grandfather's transistor radio blaring in the house. A digital radio came next replacing the transistors even though the latter are more portable and convenient to pack in a limited space for a globetrotter. Why am I reminiscing about this, when an AI can summarize these trivia for anyone curious enough?

The AI you see and experience has gone through similar evolution that is hidden behind the scenes. If you ask AI itself, its evolutionary path you would get a timeline starting with Alan Turing, the father of computers who is famous for his Turing test that discriminates between a human and a computer/AI in a double-blind test.

To be human is to be fallible. The history of humans is replete with this axiom. We have no idea how many glass bulbs Edison broke, before one lit up. King Ashoka though won the Kalinga war, failed in the end by converting to Buddhism and abandoning his kingdom. Much earlier, Lord Krishna failed to bring peace among yadavas and ended his avatar. Lord Rama failed as a husband in taking care of Sita and his children.

Yet we all know success has many friends and try to live up to it fully aware people will take advantage of us. Like fire flies some never learn until the final moment of shock and awe. Is this the reason the ancient rishis of Bharat proposed their theories and left their implementation to the posterity? When we say vedas are infallible, we mean our rishis. If all they did was imagine or hypothesize several situations and predict their outcomes based on an active imagination, they are like a demagogue who runs the country on executive orders because the act of legislation is too hard and time consuming.

We all get bright ideas, but feel like not sharing with anyone lest we should be perceived as coming short of expectations. We all are capable of writing books, especially autobiographies, much easily in our mother tongue, but not everyone is sure about privacy. The Shor's algorithm, for instance, a cornerstone of quantum encryption, if implemented in the future in the quantum computers and made available to one and all, then we can all be sure of keeping our secrets among a few trusted ones and protecting our IP. Until then, we have neither privacy nor patentable ideas.

So you see the survival of human creativity, in one sense, rests on researchers creating a quantum computer, an exercise in futility so far. What the heck is quantum computing you ask? Imagine you buy apples by the dozen but don't feel like consuming them all at once. Then you need a refrigerator to store them. The fridge lowers the temperature and prolongs the life of apples. You can say whatever chemical processes that are taking place internally in the apples, are slowed down in low temps. This also is the principle behind frozen foods, vaccine storage, organ transplant, etc. Thus, a quantum computer is a fridge for electrons.

Having said that, I invite ridicule in the form of "Is an electron then like an apple with life?" Maybe not. However, we can say an electron has consciousness. It is smart enough to know when someone is observing it or trying to measure its attributes. Indeed this is the fundamental basis of quantum physics and Young's double-slit experiment.

From looking around, we note all conscious things are alive. How about plants and microorganisms? Based on your belief system, i.e. a Jain, a Budhist or a biologist, you make your own judgment. Similarly an electron is conscious, by extension, alive!

Going back to quantum computing vs. regular computing, if you take your laptop or desktop and drop it inside a "fridge" whose temperature is lowered to 0 Kelvin, way way below the temperature of ice, then you can see the quantum effect. Perhaps. The major hurdle here is achieving the magic temperature with the current capabilities of thermodynamics. Physicists tell us that at 0 Kelvin the electron has neither spin nor linear motion. That means it can be harnessed for our desired ends such as encryption. But does it have life? Maybe not. It will be like "Jack the boy, all work, no play". Therefore, the end of creativity. It is upto each of us to decide if this is acceptable and worth pursuing.

Regards

Yagna, Yaga, And Agni Hotra

My childhood favorite movie was titled "Sri Krishnaarjuna Yudham" (1963; exchange of weapons between Krishna and Arjuna). It portrayed a fictitious event in the backdrop of Maha Bharata where Krishna and Arjuna compete for a bride: one seeking arranged marriage and the other a romantic one. As if this was not controversial enough, the director imagined Agni deva suffering from indigestion and burning Khandava forest, full of healing herbs, to relieve his symptoms.

We may dismiss the movie as made for the entertainment of the masses. Fast forward to 2025 and visit the website of University of Applied Vedic Sciences (UAVS). If you are wondering like me if there isn't a catch here, you will be proven right. The web site cuts to the chase and presents a questionnaire for prospective students. I don't see any surprises there. However, the founder has a youtube channel where he shares his vedic knowledge--truly yeoman service--with a single practical application in the form of a yagna.

When I visited SriPuram near Vellore (Tamilnadu), before entering the golden temple, I saw a yagna being performed where the ritviks were pouring ghee into the fire. We can have any opinion of Sri Puram as a money-making-machine for the trustees, but the fact remains the temple is serving the underprivileged students and the people on the lowest rung of the economic ladder by drawing devotees from all over the world. Besides, I don't know of any temple, save Zoroastrian ones, that performed yagnas 24 x 7 x 365.

I made Zoroastrian temples an exception even though there are less than a quarter million Zoroastrians in the world, mostly in Iran and India, who worship Agni deva. I surmise they perform fire rituals that aren't a world apart from vedic yagnas. There could be a common ancestor linking them with the people like UAVS founder. This is all speculation.

I can imagine the recourse to yagnas, when one is faced with an impossible situation, to appease gods so that his/her lot is saved from a calamity such as a cyclone, ash from an volcanic explosion, drought and famine, or simply prarabda karma, as there is nothing else a common man could do.

Hindus traditionally perform "agni hotra", a miniature yagna, in various ceremonies such as marriages or on a daily basis. Chandee Yagam is popular among the Indian diaspora where the goddess is prayed for bestowing wealth and health to the family performing it.

If you are wondering what's the difference between yagna and yaga, it is the intention. A yagna is performed for the larger good, community welfare and world peace. All the other fire rituals are meant for the well-being of the individual and family.

Now turning to science, can a yagna affect the environment that is plagued with pollution, green-house gases, depleting ozone layer, global warming, melting of glaciers, etc.? May be in the light of quantum physics being merged with mainstream physics by the announcement of nobel prizes this year. One can say the smoke from a yagna is made up of quanta of positive energy that spread in all directions and produce beneficial outcomes such as healing the ozone layer, cooling the atmosphere, producing rains over a region in drought, etc. The quanta emanating from yagna act as catalysts in a chemical reaction.

The obvious question is, why doesn't our government have a Ministry of Yagnas that is entrusted with the job of conducting yagnas 24 x 7 x 365? With the abandonment of Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA in USA) by the developed/developing countries, it seems like a reasonable ask. A yagna is the panacea the governments all over are seeking, in a cost effective manner. While continuing with fossil fuels and other pollution causing activities, yagnas could be conducted simultaneously. The gods will smile down on us.

As for what and how of yagnas, the faculty of UAVS could be enlisted in the selection of right herbs and coordinates on the map with the highest impact, training of hotas or priests performing yagnas, and general logistics. The seculars might object to mantras and ask if they are necessary. The mantras are like background music to the yagnas and keepers of timing. Otherwise, as shown in the aforementioned movie, the Agni deva will consume all you pour into the fire happily!

Regards

Judges and Dedication

Now in the finale of this series on the American judicial system, let me first mark my dedication to Subrahmanya Vedam who served 43 years in a US prison on a wrong conviction. His only fault seems to be being close to a mleccha with a limited lifespan or "akala mrutyu". You can read all about him online and the sham trial that took place in 1983. It should raise a sky-high stink about the American judicial system which, like vaccines alleged to be causing autism, serves the few who are mighty or privileged.

None can guarantee that a similar conviction won't happen ever again, but we can agree it all depends on the judges. Because in the jury system, the judge interprets the law and decides on the punishment called incarceration after deferring the fact finding and sifting to the jury. It is like a college professor delegating his tasks to teaching assistants and reserving the grading part to himself. So often we hear the college professors and judges in the same line as they have similarities such as tenure and independence from close scrutiny.

You can surmise by now what I am going to say about the judges applying for professors as well. They both are elevated to the highest pedestal of a foundation that sits on a fragile framework of trust and reward. You might have heard of American professors inviting foreign students to study in their universities knowing fully well that the students pay their way for an OPT visa that enables them to work off campus. Neither the professors nor the judges have anything to do with OPT directly, but as you will find out they are conspirators in a strange way. Before an OPT can be issued, the professors have to give passing grades to the foreign student. If a student on OPT has to be deported for any reason, it has to be done by a judge. As simple as that!

The mainstream media paints the federal judges as either subservient to republicans or democrats based on their ascendance or in parlance nomination. Of course, they would never agree to subservience, but statistically speaking their judgements often reflect the puppet masters' wishes. The professors, on the other hand, depending on federal grants for their research activities, naturally, have to tow the party lines. The hue and cry about the vaccines causing autism is all about research and data that has been generated or gathered to fit a narrative of total control on nature vis-a-vis disease.

If you go through the thesis of Prof. Salk, who developed the first vaccine ever to prevent the spread of Polio by injecting de-activated polio virus, you will find that some percent of the people may have a reaction or worse die from them. It is like 6-sigma in a factory making advanced electronic chips where one in a million chips fail quality checks because of human error. Similarly people administering vaccines could be responsible for some of the adverse outcomes. Just like the economists tell you to follow the money, follow the germs and you will get the answers.

The judges believe they hold the ultimate wisdom about the law of the land. When you have legislators who pass a law on the value of pi, as they had done in Indiana a long time ago, you will have to appoint judges who agree with them. Any judge who says pi is an irrational number that can't be boxed in a finite value will have to look for a job in the real world, not in the citadels. Judges being elected in progressive communities like legislators are reflective of this sentiment.

Like some professors of the private institutions, the judges might say they are self-funded and not smooching from the taxpayer troughs. While this seems laissez-faire we have instances of professors faking data to promote the sponsors like in highly contested pharmaceuticals and electronics operating on patents. And judges bending backwards to please the cartels or organized criminals. In India this is called kickbacks such as when they found bags of currency in a Supreme Court advocate's guest-house. The grand jury system in the US is supposed to take care of this, but that is for another day.

However, we can talk about an Arizona judge relieving herself in stupor. The mainstream media dumbed it down by saying it is her husband's fault. The judge ended up resigning unapologetic as she is appealing to, shall we say, a higher calling! We shouldn't say all judges are alike and apply the same standard of jurisprudence. Some are sharp, others need prompting and almost all of them are witless.

With those few words, I rest my case.

Regards

Juror Types

Before I proceed with juror types on a light-hearted note, I will point out that both current VP JD Vance and his telugu wife have law degrees and the acronym JD stands for Juris Doctor which is a three-year professional law degree. Upon completion of a JD program and passing the bar exam, individuals are eligible to practice law. I am not suggesting a conspiracy nor predicting the next president of the USA.

The word "juror" originates from the Anglo-French "jurour" and Old French "jureor," which means "one who swears an oath." This, in turn, derives from the Latin "iuratorem," meaning "swearer," from the verb "iurare," which means "to swear". The root "ius" in Latin refers to "law". Thus, the term reflects its legal context and the act of swearing an oath to serve on a jury. So on a lighter vein a jury is a group of chosen people or the congregation of jews, the high priests of the Old Testament who can adjudicate and punish or reward anyone they like, such as Jesus Christ, without jurisprudence.

Sticking to the modern context of juror, say in California, 12 jurors compose a jury. They are chosen from a larger pool of citizens who are retired, working or entering the workforce. I will enumerate what I think are the 12 types of jurors that are typically chosen by the judges, prosecutors and lawyers, who by the way, have different priorities and moral leanings. For instance in the case I know of, a female attorney is representing a male accused of abusing his mother and wife. You can take it as a subliminal suggestion that the said abuse never happened because a very qualified feminine offers moral support. There is no law that forbids a female to defend a male accused of abusing his feminine relatives. However, a male representing a male accused of crimes against females will definitely be seen as a misogynist. So it is a fine stratagem by the defendant in this case.

Further in most of the US states, in such cases, the public prosecutor (PP) has the burden to prove the case. You can imagine now the gender of the PP based on the stratagem. A female PP will argue this is an open-shut case. A male PP might say nothing substantial ever happened just as no one saw when a tree fell in the forest from a lightning strike.

In this context, let me remind you of what is called pramana in hindu scripture. A pratyaksha pramana is when someone saw, heard, tasted, touched, smelt something with their senses. This is the most common one in day-to-day life. An anumana pramana is an inference such as "I see smoke rising from the mountain and I think that is because of a fire". An upamana pramana is when you say "Gava is a type of animal that is like a govu/cow" or "An elephant is as tall as the banyan tree". Note that in the former a Gava might never exist in reality! Thus, we have many pramanas including by inference which sometimes are called "circumstantial evidence".

It is safe to assume that the JD's don't rely just on evidence, loosely translated as pramana, but bring in myriad emotions because the human brain is architected to react easily to emotions than thoughtful contemplation as you may have heard about the different functions of left/right halves of the brain and male/female preponderance. So when the jury is mostly female, rationality is traded for emotions, not to say females are irrational because the rights of ethnic/racial minorities are often clubbed with feminine in American society.

So the promised 12 types of jurors are coming up next with a summary.

  
12. Mr.Gandhi : I haven't seen, heard, smelt anything. I am fresh as prim rose or a blank slate without biases or prejudice
11. Ms.Teresa: I am kind, compassionate and will always make the right choice
10. Chef de jour: I can cook up any explanation to support my argument in a seamless or airtight manner
9.   Mr.Detective: the facts presented don't represent the root cause and I am going to dig into it
8.   Ms. Holier than Thou: I would never do a crime or a moral transgression and I know one when I see
7.   Mr. Confess: I confess to my past misdeeds regardless of my selection as a juror
6.   Grandma: I have a hundred great grandsons and great granddaughters who all are either doctors or engineers, so trust my judgement. 
7.   Grandpa: Though I am retired my mind is as sharp as my driving skills. Stay with me to enjoy the ride.
6.   Mr. Graduate: I passed my degree with high grades yet without a job. If this is the only job I get for ten dollars a day, so be it
5.  Ms.FBI: I am a part-time FBI/CIA/NSA agent and am here to mock you or worse honeytrap 
4.  Mr.Perpetual : I was a juror for ten trials in the past. My experience speaks for itself.
3.  Ms.Holy Book: I carry my bible always and go by book
2.  Mr. Retired: I am a retired legal professional who rose in the ranks starting as a janitor. I am peerless
1.  Ms.Constitution: Our founders know best. If it is there in the constitution, I am all for it. 

I left out immigrants who are mostly disinterested to do their own research into the American judicial system. They are sometimes brought into trials where the translation services are inadequate or too expensive provided they are not "polarizing" or sucking the oxygen in the room.

Hope you took all of this in a lighter vein.

Regards

Between India and US which is more litigious?

I had the privilege of being called for jury duty recently after nearly 40 years of US residency. I pose the question in the subject to be provocative as well as informative. Before I can answer it, some background information. The civil rights movement in US officially ended in 1968, but continues to this day in the courts. Appropriately, the US Presidents since 1968 including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, Geroge W Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden hold law degrees to feed the fuel.

To understand the level of depravity, you only need to search for "legalese for abuse". Americans abuse the legal system itself for either pecuniary reasons or to bankrupt an opponent who can be an ex-spouse, employer, etc. The private lawyers litigate endlessly with appeals or delays for trivial reasons while the public prosecutors paid for by the tax-payers surrender. For example, when an ex is served a notice he/she has to attend at the stipulated time and place at their own expense only to realize it is a trap because the abuser had already planned a motion to delay.

Now let me come down to the common applications of the legal apparatus called "abuse". They include often heard domestic abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, child abuse, elder abuse and so on. In the case I am familiar with, a middle-aged man was accused of abusing his mother. Assuming they communicated in a mother tongue other than english, without expert translators, and accommodating for translation defects, it is extremely difficult to decide. So the prosecutor, with infinite wisdom but little experience to match, added charges of spousal abuse, which is a crime requiring a jury trial. What I am getting at is: the prosecutor is treading the gray area between verbal abuse, what with freedom of expression as the cornerstone of USA, and physical abuse based on non-medical evidence, hearsay, toying with the jury's emotions, etc.

In a nation that prides itself on gun-culture, brandishing a weapon can be deemed a crime. I haven't seen any high profile cases where mere display of a weapon was considered a crime, even though in a domestic situation it could be construed as abuse, especially when done to gain an upper hand or subjugate the victim. These days the US president, surrounded by the Secret Service, is going after cartels whose members operate in the US without a valid immigration status, but have conjugal relationships within the US. What if a jury decides a cartel member as guilty, thereby facing retribution much after the trial ended? No one knows the answer.

These are the reasons I prefer an AI to weed out the bad cases preempting the jury trials that cost enormously more than single-judge decisions as in India. For example, an AI can ask for physical evidence in a spousal abuse case. The non-emotive AI, by definition, will reject an expensive jury trial without expert testimony. Perhaps a family court judge can make a decision, however flawed it might be.

Assembling a jury in a Work From Home, Zoom-culture, is another deficiency that is easy to fix. After all, it is not a beauty contest, if only bobbing heads in Zoom can be trusted not to broadcast the jury deliberations in youtube or reels. Even then, who has time to go through the live streams of various jury trials all over the US. I can imagine the video servers crashing with "Out Of Memory".

To gain a perspective, in the vintage hollywood movies a jury trial was shown as open to the public. It has morphed these days to fit the capacity of the security at the court houses to scan for the bags and the availability of metal detectors. Guess the wild west movies didn't have that problem. Nor did the famously televised OJ trial in the last century.

I think by now it is amply clear that neither TV nor Internet is welcome in the jury trials and voting booths. That is the price of having a capitalist democracy that thrives on Jekyll-And-Hyde. In India we still see the Robinhood trials. When a common man gets a trinket from a web site, after paying GST on all conceivable things, the courts want to go after the web site owners. Multi National Corporation (MNC's) operating as Rob Peter To Pay Paul are also the fodder for the news as they are sensitive matters affecting jobs, trade and international relations. Finally we have famous movie trials that started with Bollywood blockbuster "Insaf Ka Tarazu". Jai Bhim, Pink, Shahid, OMG, Jolly LLB, etc.

I am reminded of a famous Hollywood line: "You can't handle the truth!" I don't recall if the setting is a military court martial. It already has been a long article and I hear the gavel going down.

Regards