The Agrinautica

   Okay that was so fun last week, I'm going to once again do a general summary of our Court meeting minutes, so you can all marvel at what an august body we are.

8:10 - We have quorum with five justices, but Justice Coady is running late so Vice Chief Harney, who is presiding, holds off calling to order. While we are meeting informally Justice Wheat urges us all to vote no on Proposition 90, saying it will in effect allow the government to seize by imminent domain a lot of lands that would otherwise be protected environmental areas. Justice Harney disagreed, and it went back and forth until someone else (jokingly) suggested they schedule a debate in the coffee house.
   Next I announced my distress at seeing the Wikipedia article of the day declaring that .999... equals exactly 1. Particularly alarming, at least two of the proofs offered were very easy to follow and seemed compelling. I, however, remain suspicious that the problem is with our math system and not reality.
8:18 - Meeting called to order. We discuss the latest developments in the ASUC Berkeley scandal, discuss the case we discussed last week just a little more (as Harney had been absent at the time and had some thoughts). It is proposed that for further practice and to really hash out our thoughts on the subject we will cobble together a brief unofficial opinion on our take on the case - Justices Wheat & Coady volunteer to head this.
   We unanymously accept the Senate's recommendation that "Student" be stricken from the Judicial Codes where it erroniously says "Student Court." We discuss who will Vice Chief for the next two weeks, in accordance with our Partitioned Vice-Chiefship Plan, and parli pro starts to get a bit wacky. Coady: "Lets move on to the next agenda item then, nominations for Vice Chief" Harney: "Alright its moved that we take nominations for Vice Chief, do I have a second?" Coady: "I second" Harney: "you can't second, you moved!" Coady: "No, I recommended, YOU moved, so I can second!" We were of course joking, we're not that anal-retentive. Coady declined a nomination, Wheat was nominated and accepted uncontested as the new Vice Chief (for the next two weeks).
   Then we got into a discussion as to when exactly one is impeached. We know that an impeachment that is not successful is still an impeachment (for example I was impeached three times but never removed), but the Chief Justice before me resigned the morning of her impeachment, so was she technically impeached?
   Harney brought up that he'd talked to Student Judicial Affairs and they had said they might consider transferring review of parking ticket appeals to us. While this seems at first kind of an odd thing to add to our repetoire, a lot of Chief Justices at other universities I've talked to have mentioned having such a duty as well, and I think it might be a good addition to our role, didn't seem to have any major drawbacks (other than increased workload and potentially less interesting cases, but I think we could deal), and students would probably feel better about appealing their parking tickets to us than to faceless SJA droids. We were all interested in having Harney look into this further.
8:50ish - Meeting adjourned.


   In other news, the ASUCD Bill to formally remove us from UCSA has been written and introduced I believe. It was written by none other than former UCSA Chair Brent Laabs.
   Also, regarding the Berkeley scandal, apparently the attempt to pilfer the ASUC Berkeley treasury has been dropped from the Senate Bill. Now all it does is say that everyone should work on better bylaws. Now there's a shocking new policy. Maybe we should legislate that we should legislate as well!


Completely Unrelated Picture of the Day

Tom's catmom instincts kick in

   So today the landlord called and informed me that my roommate had not paid his share of the rent in September. Additionally the amount he gave me this month does not reflect the fact that we are down a roommate. So my roommate owes me $1,048.98. )=
   Additionally, the roommate we were supposed to lose at the end of August stayed here until about the end of September, and didn't pay rent. Being out of town I wasn't aware of this until I got here and found him here. We are certainly going to try to collect on him, but as he's moved back to the Bay area I'm not terribly optimistic. )=


   In more pleasant news, last night I was playing Civ III (no doubt patrolling for Portuguese with my battleship the HMS Gavel), when Allan Rae talked me into being sociable and I went with him and two other lads to a party that happened to be occuring at the old Pirate Ship House on Mulberry.
   There I found my good friend Justice Tim Coady to be among the current residents. Noteworthy people represented were too numerous to attempt to catalogue here, and awesome times were held by all. Eventually I left around 4am.


   Tonight C-Bunch, Olivia & co are having a party at their place. Should be piles of fun.


Picture of the Day

   I ventured up to the Third Floor today, and ran into Kristen Birdsall. She informed me that it is her belief that the four justices OTHER than me on the Court were not properly selected, and thusly should not be considered to be currently in office. Specifically, the interviewing committee which was to forward nominees to Senate was incomplete, and some justices may not have been administered the oath of office.

   I am currently investigating these assertions, and will seek the advice of the 22 Chief Justices of other universities with whom I am in contact. I intend to take Birdsall's concerns seriously and maintain an unbiased position regarding this issue. As such, I will leave advocating for the involved justices up to them -- however, I must say that as a matter of universal policy, they are to be considered duly appointed until proven otherwise in some legitimate and official fashion.

   Since people are always eager to blame things on me, let me say also that the two procedures that were allegedly done incorrectly, composition of the interviewing committee and administration of the oath of office, are the responsibility of the President and the presiding officer of the senate, respectively.


Previously on Emosnail
   Three Years Ago Today: I am Appointed to the ASUCD Supreme Court - Sometime later I'd realize I hadn't been sworn in and go make someone administer it to me just to cover my ass. Also I meet Amy Zimmerman's twin sister Sharon and hang out with them. Also, good times as a Coffee House cashier. I was like, a CoHo cashier before it was even cool.