A Series of Tubes

I post information about the treesitters from time to time.  This is one of those updates.  They are still up there.  The banners that they hung in the trees are twisted up by the wind and made unreadable by the elements.  Someone associated with the treesit set up a blog.

You can read a speech made on October 7th at the treesit outlining the treesitters current manifesto.  I think they would save everyone some time if they had just written the following:

As treesitters we believe in the following things.  First off, Europeans are jerks who killed the Native Americans that used to live in the area, the Ohlonean people.  As a group mostly comprised of descendants of white Europeans, we refuse to recognize the irony that we are attempting to speak on behalf of the Ohlonean people today.  We are going to stay in our tree until everyone agrees to turn back the clock of time about 500 years and put things back the way they were.

We don’t like things that sound technical because we don’t really know what they are, and therefore hate them.  These things include but are not limited to: biotechnology, nanotechnology and advanced computing.  (By the way, I hope you guys like this nifty blog I set up with wordpress.  I hear the servers for this website run Intel’s processors that are made with a 45 NANOmeter design giving me, a treesitter, access to the latest computing technology).  If we are not successful in rolling back the clock then at least we created this wonderful space for people to come together and have a dialog.  By dialog I really mean you can talk to us unless you are the University, anyone linked to the sciences, anyone who wants research to cure and treat diseases, or anyone that wants a rational discussion of the LRDP.  This treesit will probably fail but at least we are a huge pain in the ass, and when you get us out of these trees we promise to be a pain after we come down too.

-signed Owl, Raven, woodpecker, treebark or whatever part of nature I decided to name myself to make this whole treesitting endeavor lose its legitimacy in the eyes of the public

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I always have trouble determining who to vote for in local elections. The only information I have previously used is the small blurb that I get in the official election material. I decided to hunt down information on the people running for city council and post my thoughts on their campaigns. I think the best place to start is the candidate forum videos below. I found the videos on the Santa Cruz Community TV website and the Forum is put together by Santa Cruz Next:

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There were 2 campaign ads that I found interesting that I wanted to share with people.  The first is one that is 1 part local school board candidate and 1 part star wars.  I was really hoping he was going to actually attack something with his lightsaber:

Apparently the candidate really thought he was going to grab a lot of voters with his mad lightsaber skills.

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One of the things I found out today on the tubes is that Senator Ted Stevens, aka Mr. Tubes, was found guilty of 7 counts including making false statements on financial documents and lying about free home renovations from oil contractors.

I got a mailer about the California propositions a little bit ago and I also realized that absentee voters will start getting their ballots.  It takes me a while to read up and collect information about the propositions and local candidates so I figure I’d post what I’ve found to make other people’s lives easier.  Here is how I am currently leaning on the California ballot initiatives along with audio of debates on many of them.  I’ll post more about local Santa Cruz County elections later:

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Apparently the head of Lehman brothers got punched in the face. There’s no video, just the article.

It’s funny to read the free market, chicago boys, neoliberal style economists from about a year ago.  Just reading Larry Kudrow state that “I have long believed that stock markets are the best barometer of the health, wealth and security of a nation. And today’s stock market message is an unmistakable vote of confidence for the president.” is great.  He was of course writing that when the DJIA chart, shown below, was near it’s peak of around 14,000.  Today the DJIA is trading below 10,000 and doesn’t appear to be reversing soon.  So now that the economic data combined with his logic proves the exact opposite point, will he stick by his original statement?  I doubt it.

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So I found a cool flash based web game called budget hero that allows you to tinker around with how spending works in the budget to create a budget that you like. Kinda neat. I was trying to find a video of the presidential debate online and instead I found this game. I guess I’ll keep playing until the video gets uploaded somewhere.

It took me a while to disable the sidebar on the website for that one page so I think I’ve heard that intro “if you’ve ever wanted to control where your tax dollars go..” about 30 times now…

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