The Agrinautica

   Court meeting this evening. We (1) Set the time & place for the Case 34 Hearing as next Wednesday at 7:10pm, MU Mee Rm; (2) Granted the Plaintiff's motion to have two counsels speak for each side rather than one; (3) Elected a new Vice Chief Justice -- Tim Coady; (4) I read the new "Presiding Officer Suppliment" (to the Judicial Handbook which doesn't yet exist); (5) I introduced Judicial Directive 14, which codifies the position of Inter-Collegiate Judicial Federation (ICJF) Liaison, which already exists (Justice Coady); (6) We reported new contacts to the ICJF: contact has been reestablished with UCI; the UC Merced president will send me the Chief Justice's contact info as soon as there is one (apparently Justices were being sworn in down there this very same evening); we've made contact with Antelope Valley College, Puget Sound sometihng and something else (Iowa?); (7) We discussed the changes that had been made to Judicial Proposal 7.
   Though in an actual indictment hearing, on which this proposal is modelled, only the prosecutor presents, many people present at the IAC meeting on Monday found this hard to stomach. I found myself arguing with Lead Party Chairman Schwab against rights of Justices (their right to be at their own indictment), which I thought was rather funny. Anyway, regardless of the theory and precedent of real indictments, it became clear it would be very hard to make the Senate understand, so it was decided to instead disallow the prosecutor from presenting. Instead they would simply submit a charge sheet alleging specific charges over specific events that violate specific bylaws.
   To further clarify things, I went ahead and prepared an example charge sheet, in which the fictional Justice Vader is charged with various things such as sleeping with the Defendant and being the cause of the Deepthroat Incident. Calls on witnesses such as ASUCD President Neustrom & Chief Justice Kenobi.


The Special ASUCD Spurious Commission on Heraldry & Superlatives
   Once the Court meeting had concluded, the Special ASUCD Commission on Heraldry & Spuriousness (SCHS) convened. ( Warning Gratuitous Nerdery )

Time Limitations
   First day of the quarter and I made the front page -- or at least our current case did, but I was mentioned.

   While I was on the Third Floor, Senator Thomas "Llord of the Sith" Lloyd enformed me that he'd be "writing legislation so the Court can't delay cases anymore." I informed him that we were handling the case as swiftly as constitutionally possible (Hearing is on Tuesday, the first day since the case was filed for which we could provide the required three academic days of notice). He really ought to learn to be a little more diplomatic, there's a million ways he could have said that without sounding accusatory and misinformed. "I want to set a time limit for how long you can take to decide a case" he continues. Me: "There currently is one, its ten academic days and we've always had a hard time staying within that" "well it should be seven calender days then." This of course was all thoroughly discussed two years ago, and it was intentionally set at academic days to prevent the event of a case being unaddressable through being filed on the last day of a quarter such as this one was.


Elections Committee to Run in Election + a hamster
   The current case (#28, Harney v. Leathers) addresses the fact that allegedly candidates in the recent ASUCD election were not in fact qualified to run for office. This quarter we will have another ASUCD election, and in brilliant act of parody the Elections Committee itself (seen massacring the previous elections committee in this picture from the archives) has been said to be running for office.
   The slate consists of the Elections Committee members, an alumni, and a hamster. The official statement of the slate, parodying a hypothetical argument of the currently disputed candidates, is that while it may come to be realized that the alumni is not eligible for office, he will have by then been voted in, and if he had been told he was ineligible in the beginning he could have enrolled and become eligible. This closely parallels the current situation where it is disputed as to whose fault it was that the candidates were on the ballot and what they would have done had they known they were ineligible, if indeed they were unaware.
   The slate's platform includes "Transform ASUCD into an explicit Kleptocracy, and purchase an Elections Committee Kleptoc-mobile," and " A huge raise for Alex Park and the rest of Creative Media, because "its not who votes that counts, it who counts the votes," and " Replace Sword and Sandals with Freemasonry as the official secret society of ASUCD. There were at least 15 US Presidents who were Masons; how many were in Sword and Sandals?"
   The staff here at Emosnail would like to recognize that this ingenius act of satire brilliantly combines parallels to current events with extreme hilarity. We therefore would like to award this satire with the highest honours, The Sacred Order of Trogdor (seen here being awarded to Daviswiki founder Philip Neustrom in a traditional Order of Trogdor ceremony). This of course does not in any way constitute an endorsement of the intended political implications of the satire or the political goals of persons associated with it. Emosnail would, however, like to suggest that the Stonecutters be made the official secret society of UC Davis.


Jesus: ineligible as well?.
   In other news, whether Jesus Christ ever existed is set to be determined by a court in Italy. The plaintiff --a former priest, and author of a book asserting Jesus never existed-- is suing the church for "abuse of popular belief" and impersonation. Plaintiff asserts that Jesus did not exist even as a historic figure, but instead is based on one John of Gamala. Under Italian law, as plaintiff Cascioli has made a prima facie case that Jesus did not exist, the burden of proof is now on the church to prove that he did in fact exist. (source: CNN)
   Now I want to read his book. I've heard it said before by other former priests as well, that most of the bible is just synthesis of other myths and legends from other religions which were extent at the time of its compilation.


Picture of the Day

Kristy got new kitty pajama pants for Christmas