A Series of Tubes

So today there is a large protest at UCSC.  Below are some pictures I took on my way up to campus.  I got cruz alert, on campus emergency alert system, messages saying that I should avoid both campus entrances due to safety concerns.  I plan on heading over to some administrative buildings to see if they are swarming with security/police.  The class that I TA was canceled since the boycott turned violent (although on my way up I did not see a violent confrontation).  I will post more updates later on in the day.

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”.

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With Halloween coming up I decided to go to goodwill to see what I could get on the cheap. After getting a shirt, hat, and a plastic cleaver, I have my costume.  I just need to grow the mustache (and eyebrows).  I think the people around me will be annoyed by the number of times I say bork. To see a demonstration of my future behavior see:

On my way to work today I listened to this piece about oil drilling in California.

There was nothing particularly interesting about the reporting until I heard who the sponsors were after the report.  It was sponsored by…Chevron.  If you go to the California Report website and scroll to the very bottom you will see a link for Chevron (one of their official sponsors).  Total conflict of interest.  For shame California Report.  For shame.

I’m going to email them and see what their response is.

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Some people have requested that I get a facebook account.  For a better understanding of the phenomenon that is facebook please see:

As you might have guessed from my less than enthusiastic endorsement of facebook placing it between Stalking and Narcissism, I am still not a facebook member.

Recently I went to the Griffith Observatory.  First off, the Griffith observatory is named after Griffith J Griffith.  No I did not write that wrong, the guy’s first and last name is the same frign name (hilarious).  I of course found this out in a video narrated by spock Loenard Nimoy.  The Wikipedia page on Griffith J Griffith is quite entertaining (attempted murder, failed and successful lies about military accomplishment).  After the city of Los Angeles accepted the controversial money from Griffith J Griffith, seriously read that Wikipedia article, they constructed the observatory as a public institution.  This is the observatory in Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean.

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I previously posted that the eastbay express article along with a follow up article ran about Yelp.  They articles claimed that business owners were extorted by Yelp.  The CEO of yelp responded on his Blog (twice), but did not respond to the second article which did not have anonymous sources.  I posted a 1 star review of yelp on yelp.com.  Within yelp itself, the CEO of yelp, Jeremy Stoppleman, responded to my 1 star review and to the allegations made in the east bay express stories and we have been going back and forth a bit today.  I figured I would post the exchange below since it is interesting.  I will always remember this day as the day my career as a hard hitting interviewer took off.

Update: this post keeps getting updated so I’ll just post the date of the last change: (4/13/09)

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So Tesla released a cheaper car (the model S).  The original 100% electric Tesla Roadster sells for $100,000.  This new car sells for $50,000.  At half off the roadster it’s still not near my price range.  Oh when I get money, this is what I will get.  Of course there is the Mitsubishi iMiev.  It would sell, if it were for sale in the US, for $24,000.  It only gets 100 miles on a charge compared to the Telsa’s 300.  Electric car eye candy:

This video still cracks me up:

My favorite part is the “some kind of special mustache”.

Update:  Arg.  The video went down.  Looks like this video is no longer online. Hopefully it will come back.

So if you add Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Houser), Nathan Fillian of Firefly/Serenity, and Felicia Day of The Guild and have it directed by Joss Whedon (Buffy/Firefly) you get Dr.Horrible’s Sing along Blog.  Enjoy:

If you’ve played any world of warcraft then I would suggest checking out the guild. It is teh nerdy.