More tree sitters, less rational argument

Apparently two masked someones missed the memo about tree-sitting in Berkeley being old news.

Maybe they were riding the publicity coattails of the equally inane Nonstory of the Year.

Speaking of which, if you read that Paper Trail link be sure to also read the commentary. Here's an excerpt of a response (presumably by a hippie who actually goes by the name "Tree Helper"):

I do say though that any claim of odor is exaggerated. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of visitors everyday, and nobody has every told me or anyone I know that we stink.

Homelessness is a real problem affecting real people. If you are concerned about the issue, be part of the solution.

We don't have Tibetan prayer flags.

I'm glad to hear the masked tree sitters outside Wheeler Hall don't intend to stay long, and for that matter that Tree Helper clarified the nonexistence of Tibetan prayer flags, but how is sitting in a tree going to democratize the UC Board of Regents? It sounds like just as much of a non sequitur as our Tree Helper thinking sitting in a tree is being "part of the solution."

Nominated for a misquote award

Gee, it's a miracle no one got hurt here. Do 4.7 earthquakes even make the news in California anymore?

As a brilliant survivor told CNN, it felt like "someone very big and angry jumping on the ceiling below you, rather than the floor."

Maybe the floor was having an existential crisis and could no longer face being both ceiling to the room below and floor to the room above. Or the fat angry dude jumping knocked some sense out of it.

Wrong end of the rainbow

I removed Google's AdSense thing from the blog yesterday, and I feel better for it.

I followed the rainbow to find a pot of gold but realized I didn't make a penny doing it, and besides, there has to be somewhere on the Internet that an ad doesn't appear.

North Korea: "We're not evil! See?"

On the same day the Associated Press announces that the NY Philharmonic plays the U.S. national anthem in North Korea, North Korea invites 62-year-old Eric Clapton to play for them.

This reminds me of yet another South Park episode. Can you guess which? I'll give you a hint: Rod Stewart in a wheelchair.

I'm not trying to draw a distinct parallel of North Korea and Jesus, but they appear to be in similar predicaments of producing something incredible to show off to the world, and all it seems such figures can come up with is Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton.

Where's Bono when you need him? He's busy leading a group of politicians in a rendition of "All You Need is Love."

Other things Stanford spends its money on

-Tom Brokaw
-Sandra Day O'Connor
-Steve Jobs
-Oprah.

It seems Stanford has acquired the maven to check off yet another big name that will probably follow through on the university's Commencement Address, unlike some rival universities whose speakers are too afraid to cross picket lines of workers who claim they don't want to ruin graduation.

Let's see what big name they come up with at Berkeley this year, who probably will not actually speak but will probably still get paid.

Stanford for too much money on sale!

Get your degree while it's hot! Freshly farmed diplomas are now available at a cheaper price because Stanford doesn't know what to do with all of its money.

I guess now that the price has dropped, I've lost one of my main excuses for not applying to or attending Stanford.

It was bound to happen-- Stanford needs to improve its image beyond a bourgeois playground shaped like a taqueria. I just didn't expect tuition to be discounted to essentially the same as UC Berkeley (Stanfurdians under this plan would still contribute a rough equivalent of our tuition and fees) for those of us unfortunate middle-classes to earn less than $100,000 per year. At least they're stooping to our level.

But for whatever moves they make and however successful their efforts to encourage high school applicants from broader socioeconomic backgrounds (somewhere between the Pell Grant and three Beamers and a Lexus for Christmas), it's old news. Princeton has had a similar plan for years, and Harvard and Yale recently announced their own financial-aid-package-to-die-for.

Offering such glorious financial aid packages means competitive schools have excuses to remain selective, without looking like total douchebags. Princeton is a great school, but when it comes down to it so is UC Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. I got into UC Berkeley but didn't even consider applying to the others-- for monetary and personal reasons, like that I didn't want to pay many hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend a giant taqueria-- and I guess this is precisely what those schools are trying to eliminate.

If money isn't an issue, it's just about admissions criteria. Which has its own consequences, like battling the trend that poorer people are less likely to have the opportunities for good educations to earn them competitive college admission (a study probably conducted by Stanford or Harvard, anyway). It sounds good to say merit-based (as it should be), but offering cheaper higher education doesn't help those who can't afford to get there in the first place.

Oh, well. As much as I hate to admit it, Stanford's food-stamp degree is probably better than nothing.

Crab Tree people step closer to Earth, one supply line at a time

No one in the Netherlands knows anything about the high-and-mighty (pun intended) tree people in Berkeley, and I couldn't be happier. Luckily, it's becoming less likely now that UC Berkeley-contracted arborists started cutting supply lines down in Memorial Stadium's oak grove.

Frankly, I can't wait for the trees come down and the whiny tree people to get off their high horses, take a shower and recognize all the time and money and resources they've wasted on their cause. It just seems a bit strange that people who claim to be so down to earth have to sit in trees above ground to prove their point.

The only reason I care in the first place is not the tree issue-- in fact, at the spry age of twelve I advocated, via published letters to the editor, to save 200 oak trees deemed "in the way" of planned construction. It's more of a subtle and increasingly seething loathing of the ignorant group mentality that has plagued the tree people in much the same way as the crab people and metrosexual trend in that South Park episode. Kudos to anyone who got that reference in one of my early Clog articles about it.