A Series of Tubes

I’ve been listening to some lectures from The Teaching Company.  Some of them are really good and some of them are ok.  I really liked the philosophy of freedom lectures.  Currently I’m listening to ethics and public policy, but the lecturer simply poses a bunch of hypothetical questions and I think has discussion sessions inbetween lectures.  As a teaching sytle that is fine except I’m listening to the lectures on my bus rides to and from campus.

The engineering honor society at UCSC recently became a part of Tau Beta Pi.  I recently joined and went through the initiation ceremony.  It was a little weird and the whole time I was there I kept thinking of the episode of the simpsons where he joins the stonecutters:

I ran into Jono Kinkade recently.  I had originally met him when the tree sit originally got started.  He has writes for the city on a hill press, the student newspaper, and has covered the tree sit and other disputes over the LRDP.  I guess I should help out and plug the fact that city on a hill press is looking for reporters, photographers, copy editors, illustrators, web designers etc. so if you’re a UCSC student and want a 5 credit internship then email them: work4chp@gmail.com.

Well Jono was able to fill me in on the happenings of the tree sit recently.  It has been difficult to find out what exactly has been going on because there used to be an encampment at the base of the tree sit where you could go and get information.  Currently you have to read the signs hung in the trees and those don’t change or tell you what the status of the tree sit is.  Jono has written up a really good recap of the status of the LRDP here but it looks like the webpage is a massive resource hog so I might try to repost it without the crazy background image or whatever it is that is slowing my browser down to a crawl.

It sounds like there is a little bit of a split in the protest.  Read more

What do the following two things have in common:

1) Grand theft Auto 4

2) Energy Conservation

Well not much actually but the editors over at the new republic try to make the case for a link between the two. If you’re like me then you will end up knowing that the Ambient Orb costs $150 (way too much for a glowing ball) and works mostly on the pager network, but I have a feeling that you’re not like me.

I want a crow vending machine. Then I can control them as my minions:

On an unrelated note you should check out this crazy animation.

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: