The Agrinautica

   So.

   I went a week without updating. Gotta keep it all up in your face!

   Last Wednesday there was finally an Aggie Article about Case 31. I'm trying to resist the urge pick it apart, but I don't know where these references to "Student Court" came from. There hasn't been any references to a "student court" in more than an ASUCD-generation.

   I spent most of the week in hermit-like seclusion working on a paper about the decline of the Roman Empire.

   Then Friday was Cinco de Mayo. I celebrated by drinking by myself in my room.

   By Saturday I desperately needed a change of scenery. So I headed down to San Francisco, to visit Mara (blueashes).
   Now the thing with San Francisco, is driving around there is always a hellish experience. They have these street signs you find nowhere else in the world. Some lanes are reserved for trollies, or something ... taxis seem to obey their own rules entirely. Streets are set up like a grid, but somehow through the use of one-way streets and unholy magick, the entire thing is a labyrinth.
   In addition to getting directions from Mara , I pulled up googlemaps and examined the area in both the map mode and with satellite overlay so as to get maximum familiarity with the cursed roads of SF I'd have to navigate.
   As soon as I came off the Bay Bridge onto the SF penninsula it was out of control though. Almost immediately the freeway unexpectedly split in two with no indication which side was which. I chose the right side but it soon became apparent that I had chosen the wrong one as I ended up too far south without passing the exit. I had to exit, travel parallel to the freeway a few blocks to find an onramp in the other direction.. get new directions from Mara. Then key streets definitely didn't have signs identifying them.. anyway, I survived.
   Anyway, she lives in the Mission District. We walked down Haight Street, visited "Hippie Hill" at a park at the end of the street (golden gate park?). Then as we returned we came upon Mara's flatmate with her dog at another park and hung out there for awhile (where Megan --who came to Davis with Mara that one time and on picnic day-- caught up with us). Sasha is a pretty awesome doggie. Her repetoire of tricks include licking sleeping people's faces on command and giving people hugs.
   Then we returned to Mara's place and played Settler's of Catan, because we're awesome like that.
   That evening we went to some of the bars in The Mission and caused a ruckus. Most noteworthy of all though, is my estranged former best friend Alberto, who hasn't answered or returned any of my calls in four years, actually textmesseged me in response to the messege I left him saying I'd be in town. It read "stop calling me asap" -- no not really! he actually told me where he was working, implying I should stop by, but I didn't realize I had messeges until the very end of the evening.

   Kritsy was also in SF on Saturday, hanging out with her sister.

   On Sunday Kristy went to "Rock It" at The Grad, and totally rocked out.

   Monday marked two and a half years since Kristy and I began dating. When I met her she had a boyfriend of three years -- it seemed like they'd been together for ever. Then they broke up ... and eventually we started dating, and I still felt like I'd never rival her previous relationship .. but now, holy crap I'm catching up. Who would have foreseen such epic lovered?

   Tuesday (today) I worked at the courthouse. It looks like I might get moved up to working on case management conferences directly under a judge. Also there was a bit of a ruckus today.. some guy was being arraigned on bomb threat charges or something and the place was crawling with reporters. They kept trying to sneak recording equipment in, much to the angst of the guards.
   I happened to be coming out of the Courthouse when I see a reporter interviewing people, a reporter who is none other than Stan Obklodzija!
   Not quite sure what was going on but presumably it'll be in the paper tomorrow.

Picture of the Day

Megan & one of Mara's neighbours

Highlights From the Case # 31 Hearing
   On Tuesday we had our hearing for Case # 31, Van Schoelandt v. ASUCD Senate. The Defence was represented by Greg "the big city lawyer" Russel, while Hanging Chad Van Shoelace represented the plaintiffs. I was taking the minutes, so of course they are excellently recorded. Due to my inability to properly prioratize however, my attention to the minutes probably had an inverse effect on justice in general.*
   Anyway, without giving away any secrets, I thought I'd share with you some highlights from the hearing.
Witness Thomas Lloyd: "Unfortunately [Senator Ari Kalfayan] had the floor, and was probably the most confused of all of us."
Witness Avi Singh: "[Senator Ari Kalfayan] has a demonstrated history of not doing things correctly"
Court: “Was anything damaging said [during the Closed Hearing?” Singh: "I don't remember. ...so my girlfriend, she had a job. We were very terrible for this association. She had to work at 6am. Got soup thrown on her while she was here, said she wasn't going to come anymore. But if she didn’t show up she’d get checkmark on her background. You gotta keep your head up. I have no idea where I’m going with this [pause] I'm going to Harvard law school!! [applause]"
   "...I feel bad because I told Greg I'd prepare for this but I don't really remember..."

   Also of note was how other justices were going back and forth with Lloyd about what it means to be a co-author and then I read him our definition of co-author from Case 22 ... which was followed by Singh saying he thought our definition of co-author was completely bogus, to which I read him the conclusion of Case 22, which asked the Senate to redefine co-author.
   Then he pointed out that he was unlikely to know of a 2003 case since he wasn't involved in ASUCD back then. A good point which inspired me to write Judicial Directive 11 later that night. It lists the orders of the cases since Fall 2003 ... and establishes that all are responsible for knowing them.

See Also: Plaintiff witness Jonathon Leathers posted an account of the hearing. We of course take no responsibility for the views expressed by this plaintiff witness.

*Actually the minutes probably suck and it would be a compliment to justice if there was an inverse effect.


Wiki Adventures
   So I have to be ready to give a 5-7 minute informative speech on something cultural tomorrow for my introduction to public speaking class. I've chosen to do it on Daviswiki. I need at least three sources, one of which comes from something scholarly like a book or scholarly journal article (any suggestions?) and at least one visual aid. For the visual aid I'm thinking of trying to wrangle powerpoint into displaying a picture of the front page of Daviswiki or something.

   In related wiki news, Daviswiki's sister wiki, Rocwiki, which is hosted on the same machine and uses the same code, recently surpassed the 2,000 page mark.

   In more sordid wiki news (which don't worry I won't be covering in my speech), it seems just when we thought things had quieted down, contention has once again broken out on the Halema Buzayan page. Previously unknown user "NancyGrisby" has burst onto the page with guns blazing, vehemently defending Officer Ly. E-detectives have determined that the IP address of all NancyGrisby's edits has come from the Sac State campus, which interesting is where Officer Ly's brother goes.

   Also, curious as to the excessive amount of comments to "Charity Classic" I investigated and found there to be a raging debate about the water shortage in Africa. Interesting.


   On the subject of Africa, yesterday while I was marauding the Farmer's Market I was waylaid by someone who was going around handing out flyers for a protest of the genocide in Darfur. And not just passively handing out these flyers but very energetically seeking out everyone she could find to flyerize them.
   Now the thing is, the genocide in Darfur is caused by the ethnically Arab Janjaweed militia, not-very-secretly backed by the Sudanese government, trying to drive out the non-Arab native inhabitants of the region (which isn't to say there are no Arab native inhabitants). This conflict is of course intricately linked with the Chad/Sudan conflcit I've been covering. Pretty much everyone, the United States included, agrees that the Darfur conflict is a Bad Thing and put the utmost pressure on Sudan to behave itself. And so, my point, is that it is utterly useless to protest the situation here. No one here thinks its not a bad thing. There is NO chance that even the 7th cousin of someone who once was the roommate of someone who is responsible for whats going on there is EVER going to know there was a protest at UC Davis, much less care. And so this falls firmly into the category of things I find infuriatingly dumb.
   At least its not actively counter-productive like the movement to cause the UC Regents to divest from Sudan.

Picture of the Day

This is what AMPAC ESCWA 2006 might have looked like discussing water access in Africa
and its affect on the Darfur Conflict

   Mara recently got some pictures from our committee's Lebanon. As you can see, MUN is FUN. Note in this one the tall blonde guy -- he (Iraq) was totally on MTV's "Date My Mom." And Mara & I causing a ruckus at the dias.
   Also, it turns out Mara's friend Megan ended up falling madly in love with the lad she met when they visited Davis, or something, so she's coming up for picnic day & dragging Mara with her -- so Mara will be here for picnic day!

In Other News
   So Kristy works as a kitty technician at a feline nutritional research lab. Basically they feed cats stuff and observe the results. Nothing weaksauce. Anyway they were supposed to get a shipment of this raw meat cat food the other day ... only employee Olivia opens it to find LIVE LOBSTERS!!?! It was suspected that an order had gotten mixed up and somewhere a fancy restaurant was opening a box of Wild Kitty Cat Food.