Just checking a message on facebook and saw the this ad. Initially it struck me as deeply absurd but I’m coming around to the idea that she might be on to something. A lot of people don’t really realize that if you want to do something difficult you can save yourself a lot of time and ensure success by simply asking people that have already done it. If you’re nice, generally grateful and ask interesting questions the people you ask will become mentors. It’s seems a lot of people would rather puzzle through a process the long and hard way while risking failure than simply doing things the easy way. Which is cool I guess but not necessarily smart or useful most of the time. Finding mentors is largely a numbers game so it makes a lot of sense that she just placed a facebook ad.

The interesting part is that the Ad links to her blog instead of some way to contact her. I did a facebook search and found 37 people named leslie bradshaw. I sleuthed around on her blog until I found enough info about her to do a relevant facebook search and send a query about the success of her campaign + advice on how she can get a better response. {have the ad link to the about page on her blog, place her email at the top of the page and then add a direct link to her facebook profile. I am continually baffled by people who don’t understand that making a task even marginally more difficult will substantially reduce it’s possible success. but whatever, it keeps me employed}

My view is that if you don’t have any mentors you’re probably not doing anything hard. Heads up, this is a possible sign that you are stagnating and becoming lame.

“The right to speak and the right to print, without the right to know, are pretty empty.â€

-Harold Cross, the father of the Freedom of Information Act

My olde chum Adam Fangsrud just sent me word of an excellent dubstep mix called Devotional Dubz by Grievious Angel. Download it here from the Blackdown Soundboy blog if that sort of thing does the stuff for you. But the thing that I really love is the way the tracklisting is setup, excerpted here for your (but especially my) usability pleasure.

Look, it lists the times the tracks start!! Holy shit. Rather than this:

yes! yes! see? COUPLED INDICATORS MUST BE RELEVANT!! You see, knowing how many tracks on a mix is largely irrelevant. But knowing when tracks start without having to count the number of tracks is very important IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE NAME OF THE TRACK YOU”RE LISTENING TO. ie the whole damn point of a listing of tracks.

This movie was filmed in Guam last year using entirely local talent and has been in the production phase until just recently. The film is now complete, the trailer is up, and the premier is scheduled for the 2nd or 3rd week of September in Guam. After premiering on island it’ll enter the film festival circuit. The rest depends on the reception it gets at the festivals, but hopefully it will make its way to a theater near you.
It’s written and directed by the Muna Bros, Don and Kel, two incredibly talented guys who have spent the last two years living and breathing this project. They’re cool guys, check out the site and drop them an email if you have any questions about making your own independent film.

Okay, UCSC is being really sketchy and incompetent about expanding campus. They created something called the Long Range Development Plan which is poorly conceived and probably illegal. Part of it involves cutting funding to liberal arts, increasing class sizes and increasing funding for the sciences. Many students are justifiably unhappy about this and decided to set up a tree sit in a grove of gigantic redwoods that is going to become a biomedical center. It was successful (to some extent) the trees haven’t been cut down and campus is in a general uproar about the stupidity of the plans. It’s created a flood of student activism. Something happened with a group of hooded intruders breaking into a professors house, after that accounts differ heavily. see the following:

The Campus Provost sent out the following response:

The Media Director of the Tree Sit responded:

:: messageme.harvard.edu ::

wow, that is so… rational.

:: via IndyBay.org ::

A lot of people probably don’t support these kinds of direct actions by activists but the situation is a little more complicated than it may initially appear. Rational environmental policy would make a hummer so expensive that it wasn’t worth driving. Instead, our government gives hummer tax credits. Since our original framework for justice is so skewed it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to judge someone inside the context of that system. Sure, lighting some shitty suv’s on fire may be unethical, but selling them is certainly more unethical. A government that stands hopelessly intransigent in the face of global temperature catastrophe stands as the worst ethical violation of all.

Yes! I fully support this. AT&T shouldn’t be allowed to operate in public without constant public opposition like this.

:: Via boing boing ::

:: Morcky.com :: Images via Flickr ::

Excellent use of whitespace and wavy water-like patterns. You can see the evolution of this logo at logolog.

:: For Ogden Plumbing by Matt Everson of Astuteo ::

The thing I’m curious about is the use of a plunger instead of a more serious tool. Will people be less likely to use this service because they don’t perceive the need to hire someone for plunging?

this is redonkulous

Been meaning to post this for a while, it gives me great pleasure. also, Nubs Up to blue berries (organic)

I was at a party the other night and I met this guy Jon who is an organic farm inspector. He brought up an interesting point that bears repeating.

Yay!!! Some background on what’s actually going on here. So when people are sharing music the only thing that the RIAA can see is an ip address linked to a university. They send a prelitigation settlement letter to the university that in turn passes it onto the student. Until the point the RIAA doesn’t know who the student is. It turns out that the RIAA doesn’t have much legal footing and banks on the idea that students won’t commit the legal resources to fighting the battles. I’ve read in other places that the funds recovered don’t actually even go to the RIAA, they just go to pay for lawyers. No one wins here.

:: Article via ars technica ::

:: via email (thanks ben!) ::

–>American Psychiatric Association Assembly Unanimously Backs Medical Marijuana

–>Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population

::John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes via Space Coyote::

::It List::
Comingled recycling, Gap: for dumping indian manufacturers that use child labor, public revelry

::Shit List
People who don’t recycle! People who throw cigarette butts on the ground, open container laws. Gap: for waiting until raids to “discover” that their factories employ children {this has been known for years}

It’s as if he’s saying “You want some of this?? Yeah I got it right here!”

I’m not a fan of che, he’s a stalinist from what I can tell. Plus, I’m going to side with all the other people tired of 1st year college students wearing revolutionary tshirts rather than actually being revolutionary. Furthermore, I don’t support killing people, ever. I’m more of an Zapatista Army of National Liberation man myself.

Yeah, that EZLN article on wikipedia is pretty good.

To Do lists came up a couple times today in readings and conversation. It’s worth noting that simply having them isn’t always useful, they function best with certain kinds of items. I think these are some useful tips for constructing good to do lists

1. Items involve a physical action
2. Items can be accomplished in a single sitting
3. Make valuable progress towards recognized goals.