A Series of Tubes

New news on the yelp front.  As background: A while back, yelp originally got in the news due to an east bay express article regarding extortion practices that their sales department would engage in.  Essentially east bay express claimed that yelp would call up a businesses and say “hey that’s a nice rating you’ve got on yelp.  It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.  Those reviews can remain untouched.  On a unrelated note, we have an advertising program that you can become a member of on yelp.  Just remember that your enrollment in this advertising program will be you giving money to the people in control of your stores rating on the internet. I hope you make the right decision.”

I had emailed the CEO of the company regarding the east bay express claim and got responses from him denying the claim but using quite possibly the worst logic imaginable and making me more suspicious of yelp after talking to him.  It turns out that yelp is getting sued over their extortion racket.  They deny the charge and say that they will fight it in court.  I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

A recent party at UC San Diego has sparked a lot of controversy.  The name of the party was the Compton Cookout.  The part was to mark “a very important month in American society. No, i’m not referring to Valentines day or Presidents day. I’m talking about Black History month.”  To read the full invitation see here.  This party decided to honor black history month by promoting a slew of racial stereotypes.  Here is a small section of the party invitation:

For girls: For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks-Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes … have short, nappy hair, and usually wear cheap weave, usually in bad colors…Ghetto chicks have a very limited vocabulary, and attempt to make up for it, by forming new words, such as “constipulated”, or simply cursing persistently, or using other types of vulgarities, and making noises, such as “hmmg!”, or smacking their lips, and making other angry noises,grunts, and faces. The objective is for all you lovely ladies to look, act, and essentially take on these “respectable” qualities throughout the day.

The person taking claim for the party is someone calling himself Jiggaboo Jones (shown below).

If you don’t mind heavy amounts of swearing then you can watch two youtube videos where he takes credit for and also defends his actions for the Compton cookout:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jigga2jones#p/a/u/1/iGfFSZ2kcRg

You can see the display behind him freeze part way through his second speech:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jigga2jones#p/a/u/0/y95G-LH885Y Read more

Garrison Keillor is a radio personality on NPR that writes and stars in A Prairie Home Companion, who recently wrote something controversial.  For background purposes: He is an episcopalian, and former Lutheran.  His show is “family friendly” in that it does not discuss weighty or controversial topics with any seriousness, and the music featured on his show is usually bluegrass, folk, country, or hymnal.  The image below probably best describes why Keillor is a radio and not a Television personality:

Garrison Keillor recently wrote an opinion article in which he wished everyone a Merry Christmas and got into a bit of trouble for it.  Now why would he be in trouble for wishing people a Merry Christmas you might ask?  Well it was probably because he said Merry Christmas after penning a big F U to Unitarians, Jews, and anyone else that even thinks about participating in the Holidays from a non conservative Christian perspective:

“Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.

Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.”

The full article can be read here.

Garrison Keillor’s show on NPR is quite popular, and having a popular personality ranting about Jews and Unitarians can have a corrosive effect –specifically it make listeners feel free to express and act upon their own bigotries.  I firmly believe in freedom of speech, so I think everyone should be allowed to spew whatever venomous and irrational fears they have, I just don’t think Garrison Keillor is telling the truth when he ends his article with “Merry Christmas, my dears”.

Read more

With California in financial ruin, and the health care reform bill slowly transforming into the health care status quo bill, it’s hard to not become a pessimist.  Matt Taibibi is not helping.  The link below a video because it apparently auto plays and I didn’t want that when people loaded the main page: Read more

It is important to exercise your mind. That is why I try to engage in tasks that improve my attention, memory, and executive control. To be fair I don’t actively try to quantize my activities that way, but recently found out that one of my favorite activities has this exact side effect. That activity: video games.

Researchers at Beckman Institute, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL,  found that “Expert gamers and non-gamers differed on a number of basic cognitive skills: experts could track objects moving at greater speeds, better detected changes to objects stored in visual short-term memory, switched more quickly from one task to another, and mentally rotated objects more efficiently.”  I’m probably not allowed to repost sections of the body of the article, but the abstract sums up the findings nicely.

When I go home I think I’ll have to work on improving my cognitive skills.

Last week the UC board of Regents increased student fees by 32%. At UCSC there was an initial protest on Wednesday, and an Occupation of the Kresge town hall building which moved to Kerr hall (an administrative building)  on Friday. The Occupation at Kerr hall was broken up on Sunday. The reason that there are protests is in part due to the lack of change through “proper” channels.  I’d like to take the time to highlight the authority structure of the UC system.  After this, I will solve the future 2010/11 budget crisis.  First, the about page of the Academic Senate:

The UCSC Academic Senate operates as a legislative body and as a system of committees run by and for the faculty. The University of California has a dual-track system of authority and responsibility which presumes that faculty are best qualified to chart the University’s educational course, while the administrators are most competent to direct its finances and organization. In practice, these domains overlap and are interdependent. To function successfully, faculty and administrators depend on a high level of consultation, trust, mutual respect and a tradition of collegial collaboration.

So right from the get go there is a problem.  If you want to get something done through proper and official channels, which of this dual-track authority and responsibility tree do you navigate to get to a solution.  Do you attempt to take up your cause and petition the Academic Senate, or do you go to the Administration?  Obviously the Senate is the preferred authority track for a student.  It contains professors who see the effects of budget cuts in their day to day work and are more connected to the decisions being made.  However the description above suggest that if your problem is budget related, those decisions fall mostly under “finances” and would thus be an administrative decision.  To look at how this system works in practice, and not in theory, it is helpful to look at the minutes from the Academic Senate.

From time to time, budget decisions come up in Academic senate meetings (these meetings are held in Kerr hall which is the building that was occupied).  Below is a quote from the minutes between a member of the Senate and the EVC, EVC stands for Executive Vice Chancellor and is a member of the Administrative arm of the dual track authority system:

From the February Minutes:
Professor Kevin Karplus, Biomolecular Engineering, asked why, given the budget situation, is the campus paying for a security guard in an inactive parking lot. The EVC responded that he assumed Professor Karplus is talking about the future site of the biomedical building and the former site of the tree sit and the EVC does not want the fence torn down or any more destruction at the site. Professor Karplus asked if replacing a fence would cost less than security guards. The EVC said he will take that into consideration.

This request, made in February, seems reasonable.  Why pay for a more expensive guard if repairing a fence is cheaper.  Karplus, seeing wasted funds, tells those in charge of finances to quit wasting money.  I’ve seen the guard in question (actually I’ve seen 2 guards, possibly during a change in shift). I know that there was a private security guard at the construction site last month (I’ll check again next time I go by the site).  At a minimum there have been private security guards, protecting a fenced in parking lot from February till at least last month, if not to this day.  What the EVC meant when he said he would take Kevin Karplus’ comments into consideration is that he hoped that nobody would look into it when he promptly ignored this concern.  This is a minor budget issue.  More serious budget concerns were brought up in May.  Please note that Chancellors fall under the administrative arm: Read more

This is a great video to understand the problems facing the University of California system (must have javascript enabled):

So I had written up about 90% of a post about the rumblings happening on various blogs about another potential occupation.  The main evidence for this is the posting of a new manifesto entitled “this is our emergency“.  I had to scrap a majority of my original post because the rumblings of a new occupation are no longer rumblings, they are a reality.  Recently the UC regents approved a massive student fee increase.  There were large protests blocking traffic to the University yesterday.  After a day of protests, a portion of the protesters decided to occupy the Kresge town hall.

The main entrance to campus (with this and the west entrance blocked, no traffic can enter or leave campus)

A meeting at the Kresge town hall after the initial protests

Before addressing the new manifesto and the New occupation, I would like to point out briefly some other recent events.  At UCSC there was a semi occupation of the Science Library that started on Friday the 13th.  I’m not 100% sure when it ended, but I didn’t see much if any of it still there on Monday.  I call it a semi occupation because there are apparently library staff participating and University officials retained control of the doors.  Postings regarding this action can be found here:

http://thenewuc.wordpress.com/

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/14/18628646.php

Being unsure of the specifics of the Science library occupation I cannot comment with any detail beyond what is posted by others.  I do, however, want to pour over the latest manifesto by the occupiers entitled “occupation: a do-it-yourself guide“.  This is a blueprint as well as a philosophical justification for occupying buildings Read more