The Agrinautica

   As you may recall I've been covering the Darfur situation in this blog a bit.
   Anyway, the United Nations Special Envoy to Sudan, Dutch diplomat Jan Pronk has been expelled by the Sudanese government ... for blogging about the Darfur conflict!
   "It is not his right to comment," says the Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs. A BBC correspondant reports that Mr Pronk's blog "has got him into trouble before, and he has ignored requests from within the UN to stop writing on it."
   The specific quote that has caused this diplomatic crisis: "The morale in the government army in north Darfur has gone down - some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused to fight" (Oct 14th) (source: BBC)

   Such sauce! Clearly, Mr Pronk needs to discover the art of friends-only entries!


Completely Unrelated Picture of the Day

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.

So recently apparently two individuals entered the North Davis Safeway and brandished handgun(s?). "According to the police report, the suspects walked into the store and asked for tomatoes. They then entered the employee-only area and requested lettuce. Police reported that the two then stole miscellaneous groceries and alcohol. The suspects left the store and jumped into a car while one of them flashed a gun." (Aggie Article). WTF?!

   Awhile ago there were a string of bank robberies in Davis. In one (which I think was unrelated to the others, it was just kinda a fad), the police report noted that the culprit did not show any weapons or make any threats. So what did he do? I'm picturing him inadvertantly robbing the bank due to asking for more money than was in his account or something.


   In other news, apparently the UC Regents have finally been persuaded to divest from Sudan, in protest of the violence there. I would like to note that this is retarded.
   The basic cause of the violence is the dysfunctional government. Studies show that democracy generally doesn't stick in countries with a per capita GDP of less than $5,000 per annum. In general, development is the key to having a more stable government. Increasing investment in underdeveloped countries is the big picture goal of the international community in helping them.
   And.... we're taking away our investment in protest of the government's abuses???! Divestment hurts the people of Sudan much more than it sends any kind of messege. Really, the leadership of Sudan could give a rats ass if the University of California doesn't like them. All we're doing is taking a small step in the totally retardedly wrong direction. In conclusion, you all (divestmentmongers) make me sick. (related)


   Today I attended the swearing-in of a new Yolo County Superior Court judge. The former county counsel is now Judge Basha - I hope he doesn't get the Conaway case...


Picture of the Day

Giant snail riots

   Kristy is here (in OC) now. I have more to report but don't really feel like making a lengthy livejournal entry at the moment. I'm scheduled to have my wisdom teeth out on Friday, December 30th. )= I hope I feel decent enough to have a good new years.

   Otherwise the most important news this week is that Chad has declared war on Sudan, over the Darfur Conflict in the latter's territory. Violence has increasingly spread into Eastern Chad, culminating last week in an actual attack on Chadian army positions. These are of course perpetuated by the rebel groups that no one believes are not backed by the Sudanese government.
   Emosnail: your source for international political news. And you thought Chad caused trouble in ASUCD.


Picture of the Day