December 13. Another court hearing. Virtually present this time, and the defendant, once again, does not show up. An arrest warrant is issued, but it is unclear how such a warrant will be handled between two different counties. Defendant is not playing with a full deck, clearly. It is at the discretion of the judge how to deal with that. I never realized just how much power is concentrated in the person of the judge. The system of laws can only be mapped onto actual life in an extremely imperfect way. Everything that does not fit in this mapping has to be decided by the judge.