The Agrinautica

Perhaps revisionism is more easily identified where one historical interpretation has very high political/moral stakes attached to it. We all know what "Revisionism" means in relation to the history of World War II and the Holocaust. In Irish history, revisionism began by challenging the "Irish-Ireland" tradition of history, which claimed the Irish people are a unified Celtic nation oppressed throughout their history by English/British imperialism. Revisionists questioned, among other things, the mythological scope of Irish suffering, and employed statistical methods to analyze the 1845-51 famine. They were deeply criticized by historians and politicians for this, accused of sucking the blood and heart out of Irish history and stealing the Irish story from Ireland's children. More recently, though, historians have begun using revisionist methods to verify that, in fact, Irish suffering during the famine was just about as extreme as traditionally held. The April 1996 issue of The Journal of British Studies contains several articles on trends in British and Irish revisionism. - Source

   So there you go. Irish history, revisioned, and unrevisioned. Turns out we did suffer Just That Much. And, personally, I still haven't forgiven Cromwell and throw mud at his memory every chance I get.

Topic 2: Holidays
   As sort of a piece of performance art blogging, I bring you the entire (comments included) wildly unofficial totally unindorsed nothing-to-do-with-lj-idol greenroom-like Holiday Party post I made. There was glögg, there was some kind of delicious looking Australian cake, there was superhappytime never showing up despite a young lady waiting for him under the mistletoe. There was pin-the-wreath on clauderainsrm. There apparently was also a major major scandalsplosion regarding it. I'd just like to reiterate for the record that I had no intention to hijack the Green Room (tm), and was using greenroom in strictly a non-proper-noun sense.


   And now, I'm off to Nor Cal! ::jumps in sleigh::

   I've been trying to resist blogging about this particular scandal for days, but as it continues to erupt I can no longer resist.

   Recently, the UC Davis Campus Media Board¹ appointed the new California Aggie Editor-in-Chief for the 2007-2008 year: Sports Writer Eddie Lee.
   Current Editor-in-Chief Peter Hamilton shortly fired sports writer Eddie Lee. The charge was plagerism. Presently, despite currently fired status, Lee is still lined up to become the next Editor-in-Chief.
   Today a letter surfaced signed by 31 staff members of the California Aggie. It alleges that current E-in-C Hamilton fired Lee because he wanted Campus Editor / Features Editor Talia Kennedy (whom he is having a thinly disguised secret relationship with) to become the next E-in-C.
   Additionally, in the letter, the staff demanded an explanation for over a thousand dollars that are unaccounted for from Peter & Talia's trip to the California College Media Association awards banquet, calling it "tantamount to embezzlement."
   In response, Hamilton has asked for the resignation of all 31 signees of the letter.


   Talia Kennedy is also noted as, while the Aggie reporter assigned to cover ASUCD, having allegedly mated with ASUCD Senator Darnell Holloway. ASUCD history repeats itself.


   Incidently, the E-in-C previous to this, Matty Jojola, is the only one in known memory to have not been involved in a major shame filled scandal. Gold star for you Matty.
   The unfortunate history of Aggie Editor-in-Chiefs is recounted by the illustrious former Chief Justice Fricke in the Case 29 Opinion:

"Currently the Aggie Editor-in-Chief poses a more significant threat to the Aggie than the ASUCD government does -- As highlighted by the recent resignation of Editor-in-Chief Stone over allegations of abuse of power, the near mutiny of editors against last year’s Editor-in-Chief Fuller, the loss of lawsuits by the previous year’s Editor-in-Chief Vo, etc etc." Laabs vs California Aggie ASUCD Supreme Court, Case 29, 02/21/06 (p8)

   Just two more things on the ASUCD situation: (1) Its not democracy if you don't know important details about what you're voting for. I mentioned this passingly the other day, but since then its occured to me that its actually pretty important, considering that the rallying cry of the Senate is "this is the democratic way" and "they were elected!" (2) (i) senatorroy says "Kareem was sent to SJA due to a grammatical error within an essay. He forgot to put quotation marks around a quote but he still sited the source giving the website where he got it word for word. But the professor was a hardass and sent him to SJA. Natalia was caught drinking in the dorms." (ii) in response, Elections Committee Chairman Leathers says "Because of an agreement I made with Kareem and Natalia, I'm not going to publicly state what exactly they were put on probation with SJA for, but the reasons listed above are not the reasons given by SJA." (iii) SJA in my experience has always been extremely lenient. Of cases I have known to go there, they've always resulted in the most minimal / understanding arrangement that could have been expected; (iv) in conclusion, we still don't know the full story. I don't want to hear it really, but (v) the student body clearly showed in the Ackerman case that they did not want a senator who had committed an unethical act, so (vi) I think one can pretty reliably say that if people had known the full story, these individuals would not have been elected. (vii) which once again isn't to say I'm against them specifically being placed into office, but I'm seeking to deflate another ridiculous misconception that is being bandied about.


And Now For Something Completely Different - The Dishwashing Deficit
   I always do dishes by hand because the dishwasher doesn't do the best of jobs. As such I tend to ignore the dishwasher completely. My two roommates, like normal people, like to let the dishes pile up until they can run the dishwasher. Possibly because whenever I do my dishes I try to do one or two more than I made dirty, so as to ensure I'm not running a net cleaning debt, and because I'll just start doing dishes if the pile in the sink has gotten so large I can't use it anymore, I have a feeling I'm doing most of the dishes around here and the other two are growing just to rely on me cleaning the dishes they leave in the sink.
   Some people (mostly on TV it seems) allegedly have jars in which they put a small amount of money every time they do something they're trying not to do, like curse. Phi Alpha Delta has begun collecting money from people who come to meetings late. It occured to me that theoretically one could require that persons depositing dishes into the sink to deposit something like 10 cents per dish into a nearby jar, and persons cleaning dishes could extract the equal amount. This way there's at least a slight motivation to do as many dishes as one makes dirty, or at least one is more aware of their net impact.

Picture of the Day
My camera appears broken -- has refused to open the lense for several days. )=

pseudomonas me scripsit anno 2005

   Yesterday we had the long-awaited hearing for Case # 28, to resolve the Unqualified Candidates Scandal. We should have had 6 out of five necessary justices present, but Justice Konz unexpectedly resigned the previous day, and then Justice Johnson didn't show up... I got ahold of him minutes before the Hearing was to start only to be informed that he had neglected to tell me he apparently no longer goes here. We therefore had four justices, whereas five are needed for quorum. This was the subject of yesterday's document, which most of you probably dismissed as TL;DR.
   Basically the solution I opted for is to have Senate evaluate the legitimacy of the hearing and take a vote to settle the matter BEFORE we will release the final opinion (the first draft of which is written and has been approved by three of the four justices). Two noteworthy things about this opinion (subopinion?): (1) I was very pleased to have an opportunity to take a knock at Chief Justice "the Judicial Hammer" Vest's solution; (2) interestingly we are basically giving ourselves a court order in the first of the two orders at the end of the document.
   Today ASUCD Advisor Michael Tucker thanked me for rescuing him from "Hanging Chad" van Shoelace. Then Mark Champagne congratulated me on the handling of the quorum problem.
   Prior to the hearing, we received an amicus brief from a fraternity, among other sources. I was very pleased to find entities other than ASUCD officials taking enough interest to file amicus briefs -- and will attempt to avoid finding out that its probably the fraternity of someoen involved and thus being disillusioned.
   The final opinion is of course set to be announced tomorrow during Senate. Unfortunately I am to have my wisdom teeth out tomorrow morning, so if I make it to senate at all I will likely look like a chipmunk. Vice Chief Coady may have to present our manila envelope of power.


   I was just about to trek down to Newsbeat today since its the nearest source of any beverage worth consuming (namely, Jones' Soda), when what should I see in the MU but a table where some mad scientists were having people taste test different energy drinks and give them feedback. So of course I immediately volunteerinated myself. I wonder if they were weirded out by the fact that I knew what each of the unlabelled cups contained. When they asked what my favourite energy drink was I couldn't remember what "Wired" was called, the pleasant lady mad scientist told me to drop by tomorrow if I remember. I'm thinking of bringing a copy of my own thorough review of energy drinks with me.

   I'd like to add that since then (my initial review) I've tried this "Kabbalah" energy drink which is starting to show up around here, and I give it pretty high marks.


Forgotten Minutia - Things I was going to put in LJ entries awhile ago but forgot
(1) During his farewell speech Senator Eric Fox thanked Sara Henry and I for getting him involved in ASUCD -- coverage of our epic battles in the paper apparently alerted him to ASUCD's need for some Foxiness.
(2) The day after shaving my mohawk, I was saddened to walk past some punks who were loitering in front of a coffee shop in Berkeley without so much as a glance from them -- normally they would have immediately invited me to sit and talk with them. )=
(3) Moreover, while in San Diego for New Years a Navy enlistee mistook me for another Navy enlistee!
(4) Kristy and I saw the movie The Patriot (AKA Braveheart II) when she visited, and man, it was terrible. I love the part where he kills all 22 members of a British platoon one by one (while the rest wait patiently just off screen for their turn) in close combat. Its seriously worse than those Rambo movies people make fun of.
(5) I was very panicked when I learned that for my wisdom tooth removal they would be putting me out via an IV (as I have an incredible fear of needles). Kristy took it upon herself to cure me of this fear through positive reenforcement -- by prodding me in the arm with an addi turbo steel needle and then kissing me. Eventually I'd get her attention, poke myself in the arm with the needle, and look at her expectently.


In Other News
   I just realized that I'd resized all the pictures from The Grad in bicubic mode by accident -- thats why they look kinda shitty. )=
   I went to turn in the Aggie's "Best Of Davis" survey at the MU information desk, and the person working there, having just been alerted to the existence of the survey, responded with "oh, its like Daviswiki." So yeah, now when the Aggie does something particularly clever its lucky to be compared to Daviswiki, the tides have turned!


Article of the Day: Zombies - "There is also the theoretical possibility of an entity that wanders the net but has no blog, which may be called a zombie. Nobody but n00bs actually believe in them. The only evidence is anonymous comments, but it's common knowledge that anonymous comments are made by people (with blogs) too scared to identify themselves, and not some preposterous fantasy creature from n00b folklore."

Picture of the Day

From the trip up from So. Cal.

   Daviswiki officially has the Aggie's pictures of the upcoming ASUCD presidential candidates up before the Aggie does, such sauce!


   Today user "SenateScandal" started commenting again on the contentious "Budget Hearing Scandal" (which I believe had been deleted previously). This time the situation became even more apocalyptic than before, with user "DPSforLife" eventually posting serious incriminations against most of the members of Senate (note, anonymous names such as these are extremely rare). Just a FEW of these allegations (quoted verbatim) are (and keep in mind I make no claims whatsoever on the veracity of any of these):

• Former Senator Sean Ruel is a former drug dealer, has used steroids, beat his former girlfriend, and snorted cocaine on regular occasions.

   Today the ASUCD Elections Committee had to answer to two complaints lodged against them before a Student Judicial Affairs board. There were two hearings, with a ten minute recess between them. The board consisted of approximately several students from the SJA board. The Plaintiffs were “the Orwellians.”
   The first hearing was regarding the disadvantage the Elections Committee caused numerous candidates by saying that it was forbidden to campaign before candidates had been verified as eligible by the Elections Committee. It turns out such a rule does not exist, and moreover only one Certain Party campaigned during the effected week, gaining an arguably significant advantage thereby. What I thought was most significant about the arguments raised during this hearing was when the Elections Committee stated that the Certain Party in question could do so because they “verify their own candidates.”
   Even if it were a rule, and this Certain Party could reliably verify its own candidates ahead of time, in the interest of fairness one would have to constrain them to the same time constraints as everyone else, even if it meant that their verified candidates had to wait for everyone else to be verified – in effect the Elections Committee admitted in this that they consciously gave a huge advantage to a specific party.

   The second hearing was regarding the Elections Committee’s deletion of certain parts of the official Orwellian statement. While the Elections Committee had claimed they had taken the action to avoid a potential libel issue, the Orwellians began with an absolutely amazing barrage of evidence. revchad, speaking for the Orwellians, defined libel using two law books (one by an expert on contracts and torts, the other by the American Bar Assn), a quote from the ASUCD attorney, and a quote from none other than Mr Igor Birman (!!); and then, as one of the principal defenses against libel is that a statement is true, they provided no less than nine newspaper articles detailing the factual nature of the claims against former senator James Ackerman. To top all this off they cited the official United States Supreme Court opinion in Times v Sullivan, that “debate on public issues should be uninhabited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
   Also quoted, as evidence of the inequal application of the Elections Committee’s policy, was the official statement of former candidate Dana Davies-Shaw, in which quotes deriding the slates had been permitted to remain. This was significant and amusing because Dana is a member of the JSA judicial board. Though Dana had sat out from this case, it was still amusing to see the judicial board served up a quote from one of their own.
   I’m hard pressed to make an analogy for the awesome devastation of this attack, but I think one might say it was like the attack on Pearl Harbour, if the Americans had had it coming, and the Japanese caught all the American aircraft carriers at dock… and maybe even the Japanese and dropped their own nuclear bomb at that time for good measure.
   In response the Elections Committee tried to be illusive and argue circularly to the point that the judicial board sounded visibly irritated at them several times. I think my nomination for the “worst argument ever” award goes to the Elections Committee for saying that because the Orwellians could have said anything they wanted in publicity produced with their own money, it didn’t matter that the Elections Committee edited the statements submitted through them.

   The Opinion of the judicial board will apparently be submitted to their SJA keepers no later than three days from now, from whence it will be submitted to the ASUCD Advisor, from whence it will probably be edited and/or missfiled. Call me crazy but I'd rather it simulteniously be released to the Parties and (maybe) the ASUCD Advisor, as the advisor step is unnecessary, and frankly I don't trust her even with so weighty a matter. It will be arriving on her very last day here, which will mean (A) less motivation for her not to "accidently" shred it, (B) on her very last day here she'll probably recieve a document detailing the grievious error of the policies she personally caused - a pleasant parting gift from the multicephalous justice organs of UC Davis.


   Anyway, other than that, I spent the whole day in the library once again. I happened to casually glance out the window I was sitting near at one point when who should I see riding his bike across a park bench directly below, but roommate Jason. Silly Jason.
   And then the laptop directly behind me was stolen when its operator ran off for two minutes to use the restroom. Worse still, it wasn’t her computer, but her friend’s, who had also been sitting nearby. As the desks in this area have little walls around them for maximum hermitage, no one, not even the computer’s unfortunate owner who had been about two feet from it at the time, noticed the theft. Upon realization of this crime the previously militantly antisocial students in the area, all of whom would have risked their very lives to avoid interaction, suddenly became a united community of mutually alarmed and concerned students – actually talking to eachother.

   During my dinner break I consulted with Miss Kristy Heidenberger over the phone as to where I should eat. She ended up reading through the list of eating establishments in the daviswiki, which I found amusing. Eventually I gave in to the call of big juicy hamburgers and ate at Ali Baba’s again.
   I ended my day in Café Roma, which was open with free refills on coffee till one or two (we left around 12:40) with Kritsy. There we had the unique priviledge of sitting next to (Dare I say sharing a power socket with even!) the creator himself of Daviswiki.org, Mr Philip Neustrom. Also present in the café at the time were ASUCD Senator Donnie Cohen-Cutler, former KDVS (90.3FM) director Miss Teresa Kenny, and recent US Congress candidate Mr Mike Dugas.


Life as a Library Refugee
   Now that the weekend is over I must contend with the persecution of Davis parking enforcement, as there is nowhere within several miles of campus where one can park for free for more than two hours. Additionally I had to be here at 9am this morning since the book I am using is on reserve and hence turns into a pumpkin if I wander away from the library for too long with it. So it looks like today I am going to spend the day as an itinerate Davis parking refugee, scurrying about to avoid the persecution of Davis Parking Enforcement.
   To make matters worse, neither food nor drink is permitted in the library and this is enforced in with truncheon and jackboot rigor. And the University hasn't even had the merciful conscience to locate an eatery or even small coffee dispensery anywhere near the library. And, the coup de grace of making the library an unpleasant place to spend your time -- the bathrooms are ill maintained, and lacking in toilet seat covers. I don't know about the ladies, but few males indeed will dare to sit upon a public toilet (particularly an ill maintained one!) without holy protection of a toilet seat cover.


Previously on EMOSNAIL
   Year Ago Yesterday: Blogological Experimentation - Curious about page hites, I'd monitered the hits (as registered by the pictures) in the entry the day before and determined it got 513 hits in 24 hours. If I wasn't so busy I'd do a similar study asap to get the data at exactly a year interval.. maybe in the next few days if I get a chance. Also I declare the theories of jurist Donald Dworkin to be crap.

(last edited, 1348hrs)