The pictures from the Moussaoui trial crack me up. It's not that terrorism is hilarious (although Einstein did prove that Humor = Tragedy + Distance), but rather the choice of technology.

I can sit down at my computer and pull up video footage of almost anything. Want to see about 100 different videos of people farting? Ta dah! Many billions of dollars of infrastructure have been built so that I can have hot and cold running fart videos on demand. It's a rich media world we live in.

But what about the biggest trial of the year? What techology is utilized to transmit these vital images to the justice-seeking citizens of the United States? Is it high-resolution images, transmitted across optical networks? Or maybe a cutting-edge compressed video stream, based on sophisticated imaging algorithms?

No, it's some dude and his colored pencils. Granted, it looks like a pretty sweet set of pencils, but still. We could replace this courtroom artiste with a $25 digital camera and get better pictures.

I'm sure there's some arcane law that prevents cameras from going into the courtroom, but it just looks like the photographer lost his lens and sheepishly turned in a drawing instead. "Sorry, boss, couldn't find my camera. I drew a purty picture though."

This reminds me of an English class I had in high school. Our teacher put a very strong emphasis on creativity and encouraged us to push the boundaries on our essays. A friend and I often just skipped the essay part entirely and turned in some other form of expression. These included:

• An interpretive dance
• A music video
• A sock puppet lip-synched musical

But that was high school. I don't think that would fly in my current job. I can't imagine my boss would be happy if I said, "I know you were expecting me to write a computer program to process this data, but I created an ice cream sculpture instead. It was delicious."

I've wandered off topic, but that's why courtroom artists amuse me.