A Series of Tubes

So I borrowed a digital camera so that I could take my own pictures instead of grabbing other people’s pictures off the web. Here are Some of the pictures of the tree sit as it is today:

This is a picture of Mclaughlin Drive looking east from the engineering buildings. As you can see there is a banner hanging above. As you can also see that banner is a tangled up mess. The tree sitters underestimated mother natures ability to royally tangle a hanging sign. I was able to read the sign on the left earlier in the week in its untangled state. It read 4/22 and 5/1. I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure that these two dates are references to the anti military recruiting protest on april 22nd and 5/1 is in reference to the upcoming immigrant rights march and rally on the first of may.

I have a friend who participated in tent University at UCSC in 2005. He was dissilusioned with the process of tent University because the protest became a sponge for any greivance that any member could come up with. He was there to protest military recruiters, others were there for issues ranging from the UCSC budgeting process, increased fees, closing of departments, lack of educational programs, housing, lack of community at the University… You get the idea. They protested everything, and because there was no focus, there was no progress as a result of the protest. It’s pretty much official that the current tree sitters could essentially call their current encampment “Tent University 2: this time we’re in trees”. Read more

So I started watching the film America: Freedom to Fascism. From the title I thought that it would be about declining civil liberties. Unfortunately it is about how some tax protesters don’t like the income tax. I was curious about this and decided to spend a little bit of time researching the issue. The whole movie becomes a bit comedic when it is watched with the following wikipedia page open at the same time: “Tax protester Constitutional arguments“. The people interviewed in the movie cite most of the court cases and arguments from that wikipedia page. Unfortunately the movie does not present the fact that almost every single court case against paying an income tax has been thrown out or rejected in some form or another.

The director of the movie interviews a tax expert and then proceeds to ask him about the court cases and constitutional law questions instead of questions about the tax code. Since the tax expert is not a constitutional lawyer and is not charged with litigating the legality of the 16th amendment he doesn’t have the answers that the director wants. The director then uses this as his big gotcha moment where the lying stealing government is caught with its pants down. I didn’t watch too much past this since the director was obviously not being even handed. I know that Ron Paul is interviewed later on and that since Ron Paul wants to abolish the income tax I’ll go ahead and assume it is a glowing interview. It’s interesting to peer into the mind of libertarians and their hatred of taxes. It turns out that it is a bit frightening.

I might watch the rest of it but probably not. Instead I’ll probably watch this video about Monsanto. (the video got pulled since I posted it)

Update: It looks like the tax protester people got to Wesley Snipes. He decided to not pay taxes for 3 years and got 3 years in Jail.

I saw this video and found it entertaining (combines Scientology and farting). I don’t think that a scientologist would simply sit there and admit to their insane beliefs but anything is possible in fiction. Having someone lay out the whole belief system is rather entertaining. Anyhow, enjoy the video:

So after talking about Chiropractic care I realized that I was getting a ton of ads for chiropractors. The thing is that my reader base is probably less likely to click on ads to go get a chiropractor after I just discussed how chiropractors have a shady history and use pseudoscientific instruments to give them the illusion of technical and scientific knowledge. The only way someone would click on one of those ads is if the ads were for pirate chiropractors (come on google… show me some pirate chiropractor ads). “Yar! Yer spine be like the captain’s hook.”

The thing is that I’ve made various unflattering statements about many groups. One of these days I’m going to need something from a jehovah’s witness chiropractor who is married to a mormon that really likes homeopathy. That would be karma. Of course I don’t believe in karma either. And naturally I’m now thinking of a post that I could write about karma. I wonder if I would get ads on how to get better karma. I’m sure someone has written a book about it.

I need to make sure that my next post is about something that I like. That way the google ad gravy train makes its next stop right here on my blog.

It looks like I’m going to be doing some coding at work. In order to do the 1337 coding I purchased a very expensive keyboard. The price is worth it. I might mod it so that it is water instead of air cooled and possibly add some leds. Check it out:

So recently I have been using a computer that does not have firefox installed and instead only has internet explorer 6 installed. This is basically puts me in a computer user vortex of evil torment. I noticed that my blog does not display properly under IE 6. As a matter of fact IE 6 crashed completely about half way through writing this post. I might have to change my theme in order to correct the rendering errors. In the mean time I’m going to complete my post in the computer lab. What I really want to tell you about is not my  computer and browser difficulties but rather something that happened during lunch.

The area in front of the bookstore is the place where you get accosted to sign petitions, are given various fliers, and whatnot. Recently all the frats and sororities have their tables set up which is probably a topic for yet another post. Next to the fratties there is a guy with a demo for action chiropractic center. I always wondered if chiropractors were legitimate or snake oil vendors.

So I went to go talk to the person in front of the action chiropractic center demo, Dr. Ron Schmidt. According to his bio on his website, he graduated from Palmer west. This institution gets it’s name from Daniel David Palmer, the founder of modern chiropractic therapy. Palmer had previous experience as a spiritual and magnetic healer. From the wikipedia entry on the guy:

While working as a magnetic healer in Davenport, IA, he encountered a deaf janitor who he discovered had a palpable lump in his back. He theorized that the lump and his deafness were related. After a reported successful restoration of the man’s hearing^[2], it led to the beginning of Chiropractic history. His theories revolved around the concept that altered nerve flow was the cause of all disease, and that misaligned spinal vertebrae had an effect on the nerve flow. He postulated that restoring these vertebra to their proper alignment would restore health.

Also from wikipedia is the following juicy quote from DD Palmer: Read more