A Series of Tubes

I noticed more traffic heading towards the tree sit postings than my others so I figured I might as well give an update. I got an email last night that said:

“In response to an increasing number of inquiries about the Science Hill tree-sit, EVC Kliger has offered to meet with affected students, staff and faculty tomorrow morning, Tuesday, November 20 from 9:00 to 10:00 am.”

Well I didn’t check my email until this morning at around 10am so I completely missed it. Kliger has two positions on campus. He is the Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) and also a professor working on biomedical research. I doubt his views on the tree sit would be positive. I would have liked to see how that meeting went.

Part of what I have seen is the targeting of the sciences from the arts and humanities. There is this sense from the tree sitters that the new biomedical research will bring nanotechnology, biotech, weapons research, animal testing and that all of these things are bad. Let me address these various concerns.

Lets start with Kliger’s research. He works on trying to understand Rhodopsin which are the proteins that allows you to see and protein folding. Is it nanotechnology? Sure. Rhodopsin can be measured in nanometers which means it is nanotechnology (the definition is so broad that most things are nanotechnology). Is it biotech? yep. Weapons research? Well if you read one of his papers you find: “This research was supported by Grants EY00983) from the National Institutes of Health (to D.S.K.) and from the Allene Reus Memorial Trust and the Ellisan Medical Foundation (to T.P.S.)”. I didn’t read all his papers but I have a good feeling that a majority of his funding comes from the National Institute of Health (NIH) or similar government agencies. So I’m going with a no on the weapons research. Animal testing? Almost certainly. It is near impossible to do research in things like molecular biology without doing animal testing.

Now is his research morally wrong? I don’t think so. Nanotechnology is not bad, it is research that is done on a small scale. Not liking nanotechnology is similar to not liking a yard stick. If you don’t like it is is because you don’t know what it is. Biotechnology is also not bad. Biotech helps us understand how the body works. It also help us to treat and cure diseases. When Michael J Fox makes ads to support stem cell research he is supporting biotechnology. It is the dopamine injections or implantable stimulators in the regions of the brain that release dopamine that currently keep Michael J Fox alive. Biomedical researchers are not pill pushing pharmaceutical representatives. They tend to be people that want to better understand how our bodies work and how to improve everyones health. Weapons research is bad. There are people that take money from the department of defense and their research, with DoD money, does tremendous good. DARPA funds research on alternative energy and it is DARPA that funded DARPANET which paved the way for the Internet. Obviously making bombs is bad, but that is not what is happening on campus or what would happen in the biotech building.

Last is animal rights. There could probably be a whole other post just on this. I think I’ll just point you to this website for now: http://www.fbresearch.org/

As far as research funding goes this has to be addressed at the national level. Grant writing agencies are federal. There are some state level grants, but the big ones are federal. UCSC does not grant research money to favor the sciences, the federal government does. The federal government sends more money to the NSF, DoD, DoE, NIH, and others which find their way into science research.

I would actually like to hear what the tree sitters think of the new Social sciences building. “Completion of the three-building complex, located north of Cowell College at the northwest corner of Hagar and McLaughlin Drives, is expected later this fall. The Humanities and Social Sciences Facility will include a single-story 300-seat lecture hall; the six-story Humanities 1 Building, with classrooms, faculty, and TA offices, Division of Humanities and humanities department offices; and the four-story Humanities 2 Building, with Education Department classrooms and offices (the social sciences part of the project), other general assignment classrooms, and Humanities Division areas including language labs, and computer labs.”

It is a bit disheartening to see protest signs from the tree sitters that say no compromise such as the one shown at the top of the post.

Well Samay wanted pirates and farting. I covered pirates so I guess it’s time to move on to the second one. Here is a banned episode about girls and flatulence from mythbusters:

Just givin the people what they want.

So I work on science hill at the UCSC campus and there are currently tree sitters at the proposed spot for the biomedical research facility. I wrote a letter to the editor to the city on a hill press which is the UCSC student newspaper. I am posting it below along with some pictures which I’ve grabbed from various places.

As background information the LRDP is UCSC’s long range development plan. It proposes expanding the UCSC campus by increasing the number of students enrolled and building many new facilities in the forest in northern campus. The protests have mostly been against the LRDP and the expansion of the campus. Other topics of concern for the protesters include not wanting animal research, the funding of the sciences which many feel drains funding away from the arts, and the corporatization of the campus. You can read the various reasons here:

http://lrdpresistance.org/media.php

My letter to the editor is in response to :

http://www.cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=860

I read Amelia Timbers letter to the city on a hill press. She talked bout her disappointment in attendance to “comment sessions” for the LRDP when it was still a draft. As a participant at more than one of the early “comment session” I can say that absolutely nothing good came from those comment sessions. Myself and others expressed concerns over the plans to construct a new college over top of the current trailer park. I articulated very specifically that removing one of the most closely knit communities on the campus would be a terrible idea. I didn’t yell. I didn’t hold a sign. I didn’t climb a tree. I articulated my concerns through proper channels.

Now lets look at the result of my comments. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nobody running the comment session did squat about my comment. Did it get recorded? Did anyone do anything after I made my comment? No. What is the point of comment sessions if your comments are promptly ignored? Showing up to the comment sessions was a colossal waste of my time and energy. I stopped showing up to “comment sessions” because I lost respect for its ability to provide a productive feedback system.

I tried to articulate my concerns and needs through official channels. I tried to do this early on. It didn’t work. I am not surprised that students feel frustrated enough to sit in trees.

Now that I have articulated my critique of the official process of the LRDP I think it is only fair to articulate my critique of the tree sit. Illegal activities associated with the LRDP resistance movement should be condemned strongly by the tree sitters. I am talking about the pulling of fire alarms and graffiti on campus. Those actions will quickly erode support for what should be actions promoting a well articulated critique of the LRDP. http://lrdpresistance.org/, the website that has graffiti advertising its existence around campus, should have a post right on the front stating that illegal actions and misuse of safety equipment are not supported by the tree sitters.

I am an electrical engineering student and I support biomedical research. If the tree sitters played their cards right I think I could support their actions. Here is how: Make the tree sit about the lack of concern for the students input in the LRDP and the inability of the Santa Cruz community to absorb a larger student body due to lack of water resources, increased traffic, and increasing rental rates. If that is the stated goal then there are many people in the sciences that would readily support a tree sit. Instead the tree sitters include arguments about animal testing and the distribution of University funds away from the arts and towards the sciences. By including these arguments in their protest the tree sitters slice off a large portion of potential supporters.

Well I’m not going to generate my millions with those vacuum tube ads on the right which means I need to stop talking about them or else google with think that all I care about are things that predate transistors (notice my clever wording so as to avoid saying vacuum tubes again).

To fix this problem I have decided to write about things that my legions of fans, I’m looking at you Jess, will find enjoyable and that google will deem is the proper intent of this blog. That thing that I shall write about is pirates.

I’m hoping that by writing about pirates, ads for eye patches, hooks, peg legs and the like will start appearing on the right hand side. Everyone that visits the site will be drawn to this awesome assortment of vendors to fulfill their pirating needs and then the millions start getting delivered. Perhaps I can get that in doubloons. Yar.

Here is an example of the supplies.

Ok I didn’t quite hit the total number of posts that I needed today to make my millions so hopefully my legions of fans all told about 5,000 people so that we can get this money machine rolling. So in order to make about 2 million dollars this year I have a scheme awesome business plan. I’m going to think of ideas to put on greeting cards such as Christmas cards. As a matter of fact I have a particular Christmas card idea that is going to be put on a card this year. In order to find out what my genius Christmas card idea is I suggest that you check this blog daily. I was about to mention that you should click on the ads on the right but apparently if I suggest that then I would be violating some of my terms and conditions with google and your click of the ad would not generate my desired millions. I will then decidedly not mention what I think you the reader should or should not do to the wonderfully delicious ads on the right hand side of the page with their attractive display and luring descriptions of products and services.

So to train myself in the art of genius card idea generation I did some research by purchasing a card. It was a congratulatory card for someone that just had a baby. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone that is having a baby anytime soon, but the first person that has a kid that knows me well enough to expect a card from me will get this awesome congratulatory card:

Yes that is a baby shooting out of a champagne bottle. Got it at a fair in SF, but you can get similar stuff here if you want to.

Ok. If I’m going to make my millions with the Internet I’ve been told that people will need to want to come to my webpage. The best way to do this is to write things that people will want to read. So If I can get $.50 worth of people to view each post I figure that to get my first million in a year I simply need to write 2 million posts in a year. That comes out to an average of 5479.45205 posts per day….This is going to be harder than I thought. Ok people, tell your friends so that I only have to write a post or so a day. Specifically tell about 5,479.45205 people because the current rate of google ad money is not getting very far. I can buy a lunch about once every 10 days or I’ll have my million dollars when I’m 5475.81853 years old. I’ll probably have to spend some of my riches on research to keep someone alive to be 5,475 years old. On top of that, inflation will probably make my million dollars only able to buy a lunch 5000 years from now anyhow.

So my ads on the right hand side are all up. Time to sit back and watch the internet’s money come to me. Apparently google caught my tube reference but failed to pick up on the fact that it is a quote of Ted Stevens. Hopefully people that find Ted Stevens hilarious will also like vacuum tubes.

Welcome to my brand new and spiffy blog.  It is actually an update from my failure at a previous blog in which I attempted to use iweb.  Unless you purchase a .mac account iweb is pretty much useless.