aggienaut | Entries tagged with daniel raff

Letter to the Editor? -- see submitted version in comments
Flyers and chalkings currently cover our campus, declaring "Tomato pickers carry the equivalent of two liberty bells (4000 lbs) a day for only $50 -- Boycott Taco Bell!!" While the image of a tired worker carrying two huge bells is one that certainly offends one's sense of what farm workers should be doing, I'd like to point out that the alarming propaganda is actually quite misleading. Obviously, the workers are not carrying two tons of tomatoes at one time as implied by the image. In fact, lets do some math: say they work for 12 hours per day, that works out to about 55 pounds of tomatoes, a large basket (a "bushel basket" to be precise), every ten minutes. Certainly they'd be very busy, and I'm sure their task isn't a pleasant one, but its not comparable to the shocking image of carting around two huge bicentinarian bells, and boycotting Taco Bell will certainly not help them.

###

   Incidently, the US Supreme Court in 1893 declared that tomatoes are vegetables, not fruit (Nix v Hedden). Personally, I find this case to be a shocking convolution of botanical fact.

   Justice Raff and I were sitting in the MU today, and Raff was ranting about his disagreement with a certain article in the opinion section of the Aggie. He resolved to write a letter to the editor, which hopefully will appear on Thursday, but then we were faced with the question of what his title would be (in signed in the letter), as he's currently the Court's second in command -- Alternate Presiding Justice? Alternate Chief Justice? Vice Chief Justice? Lieutenant Chief Justice? Would that make me Captain Justice?? We decided I'd need a cape if we went with that route.

   In other news, opinion columnist Russ Fagely thinks America should get over the groundhog day ritual. I think Fagely should stop hating on groundhogs.

   Also today, we actually had an AGASA meeting again.

Previously on EMOSNAIL
Two Years Ago Today: Scarf Party - and my heater is broken
One Year Ago Today: Amie's Dance Party - whereupon codetoad and pavelthegeek are "quite abundant."

   The ASUCD Government Codes are spattered with my blood.

   I had to make what I do my best to avoid calling the quarterly Court report to the ASUCD Senate last night. Because they hate me they postponed hearing my report for a few hours. In the mean time I sat with Justice Raff and we looked up government codes relevant to things they were talking about. And we were both rather disturbed to find things relevant to two major topics of discussion that no one seemed aware of. On one the spent around an hour discussing whether or not to require themselves and future generations to attend two leadership seminars per quarter. I found in the Government Codes however, that they ALREADY ARE supposed to attend a series of training events, most of which no longer occur.

   And then they were discussing the IRS investigation against ASUCD. The mentality around the senate table seems to remain as cavalier and rightious about it as they did back when they were first warned about it. I happened to decide to look up the official endorsement policy in the gov't codes, an lo what do I find on the very back page (ie where the back cover would be if there was one):

Section 701 - (1) In any instances where there might be a conflict, the name or symbol [of ASUCD] will not be used.
(2) ASUCD, Unit of ASUCD, or symbols of ASUCD cannot be used in any way that might be construed as implying support, endorsement, or advancement of, or opposition to, any political, religious, sociological, or economic movement, activity, or program by the Assocated Students of the University of California, Davis (ASUCD).

   Justice Raff then showed this to Vice President Paloma Perez, who immediately responded with "we just added that!"
   Knowing her trustworthiness, I scampered down the hall to get the copy of the government codes hanging in the ASUCD glass case, which were dated September 2003. The codes were exactly as they currently are in this section. This means three things:
   (A) ASUCD has a really old copy of the government codes available in the glass case.
   (B) The codes explicitly forbade endorsements before this issue ever came up
   (C) VP Perez blatantly lied to me.
   In my excitement I pricked my finger on the pushpin holding the codes to the wall and got blood all over the place. Gruesome I know but I thought it sounded like it could be symbolic somehow.

Quotes - KDVS report
   Stephen Valentino, director of KDVS (the radio station in our basement), was before the Senate on Thursday for money for a project down there.
   "There are so many keys [to the radio station] in circulation that we discovered a band was practicing in our engineering room" - Stephen Valentino. Its funny because its true.. really.
   "My life consists of waiting around for my boyfriend to finish his lj entry" - Kristy Heidenberger (thirty seconds ago)
   "that makes me sound like such a loser!" -Kristy Heidenberger
   "Proddinated!!" -Kristy Heidenberger (while prodding me with a highlighter.)

Speaking of the IRS investigation: I talked to the initiator of the investigation today. Everyone's favourite former president of the Davis College Democrats was in town actually and said he'd stopped by campus but fled when he was promptly set upon by people who wanted his autograph -- apparently some members of Students for an Orwellian Society recognized him immediately.

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Entries tagged with daniel raff

The Weight of a Tomato

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