The Agrinautica

   My camera is fubar!! )=!!!!

   Yesterday my boss Dave, his friend Bruce, and technician Ryan went out on Dave's new boat. We went out to San Clemente Island, which is 55 nautical miles off the coast (about twice as far as Catalina Island). We saw several whales, as well as dolphins and sea lions. I got pictures of all these things, and a picture of Dave in mid air as he dove off the top of his boat, a picture I was particularly excited about. The weather was mostly real nice, and I swam around out by San Clemente. Unfortunately coming back however the water was real choppy and a fog bank just offshore gave us about 15 feet of visibility for the last half hour (fortunately we had radar and a GPS chartplotter).
   Unfortunately, my relatively new camera was subjected to some salt water spray from the wet return trip. I was optimistic that the camera would be fine since it didnt' look very wet, just some drips on the outside, and was working once we disembarked. This morning, however, attempts to turn it on would only make the "print" button glow for a moment (?!), even after I replaced the batteries. I drove over asap to the Canon corporate office and repair center in Irvine, but its closed on weekends. I'm extremely concerned about my camera )= I've heard that salt-water is extremely corrosive to cameras and I want to get it attention as soon as possible. )= )=

   As regards last week's crisis in the ASUCD basement, it appears that Editor-in-Chief Peter Hamilton and Campus Editor Talia Kennedy will not be resigning but will become non-functional (administrative-leave) for the little remaining time of their terms, with Managing Editor Marion Everidge as acting Editor-in-Chief. Incidently, both of them have been drawing pay for two positions, (Hamilton as E-in-C and Online Editor, Kennedy as Campus and Features Editor). Their departure has been marked by much juvenile behaviour such as the staff being locked out of the webpage (for some time after the drama the webpage didn't update, making it look from down here like maybe the Aggie really had ground to a halt) and the Editor-in-Chiefs office, and moreover very extensive edit wars by Peter Hamilton operating under the sockpuppet TravisBrown simply trying to delete all information about the ongoing drama from the wiki. Disagree by deletion = quality journalism!!

   And the fired Editor-in-Chief-to-be has been reinstated. It had come to light that the plagiarism he had been accused of was merely from a press release which was his only source of the story. While its still disappointing, it is worlds different than plagiarizing ostensibly original journalism -- the latter is fraudulent and dishonest, while the present case is merely lazy. On top of this of course, 31 staff members attest that Lee was "set up to fail" by Hamilton by being given unmeetable deadlines. This further diminishes the gravity of his lapse, and it is of course completely overshadowed by the several different indictments of Hamilton & Talie themselves.


   In other news, regarding the Chief Justice of Pakistan: A registrar of the Supreme Court (of Pakistan of course) has been murdered in his home, he was a kew witness for Chief Justice Chaundhry; and the Supreme Court has ordered the Supreme Judicial Council (different body) to halt its proceedings pending challenges filed with the SC. As far as I can tell the SJC would be trying the Chief Justice, but the challenges are decided by the SC. It appears to me that the SJC at least has had its membership tampered with by President Musharraf.


28 Weaks Later & Revenge of the Taco Tuesday (yes I mean to write "weak")
( Spoiler-Warning: I am about to spoilerize this terrible movie )