The Agrinautica

   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. )=