Of protests and preachers
The past two days have been rather...interesting...to say the least. I guess yesterday and today were the days the UC reagents were meeting here at UCLA to try to come up with some way to pull $1 billion out of nowhere to balance out the money the state of California no longer has to give to the UC system. Sadly, it turns out there are no magicians among the UC reagents, so their solution I guess is a 32% increase in students fees and massive pay cuts and layoffs. Hopefully I can get a chance to take a look at the results of the decision sometime in the future and have a special engineering/economic post about the significance of the outcome. I recently downloaded a budget report about the UC system from 2006, when it became apparent that we'd be facing these problems, so it'll be interesting to compare. The good news, however, is the state still pays for well over half of our education at the UC schools (in 2006, the state paid for 70% of our education; now we're looking at maybe 55-60%).
However, do no fear, for being the brilliant engineer that I am, I have solved our problem of student fees. Check out the note I wrote on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/notes/matt-silverman/matts-solution-to-student-fee-hikes/218887399672
I know, it's the perfect solution. What can I say?
But anyway, many were out protesting the measures the reagents we taking today and yesterday. The police were all lined up, ready to strike the students down at any moment with the massive firepower of their tasers and pellet gun thingies. I heard about police using tasers on students the first day, so today I was like "Oh, sweet, I wanna go and get tasered!"
So, yes, Matt has done the thing he has never done before...I actually went out amidst an entire group of people protesting...and survived. Looking back, it's actually hard for me to imagine myself being there. It's kind of like putting a drop of oil in a bucket of water...two things just don't mix. They were singing all these different chants I couldn't understand, waving signs that didn't particularly make sense; all in all a typical protest I'd expect. I saw signs about everything from demanding increased lab safety to a sign that said "Black liberation through socialist reformation!"
I will say, though, that I was deceived. Not once did I get tasered or shot at, nor did I get to watch anyone else getting tasered or shot at. My once in a lifetime event being at a protest, and I didn't even get to experience the stuff I went there for! What a rip off!
But that's not all the excitement we've had at UCLA. I heard about this a while back, but I guess some group published a 150 year anniversary of Origin of Species book, with almost the whole book in it (minus like 1 figure I think) and a 50 page intro in the beginning. The catch? The organization distributing them at all these college campuses is actually an advocate of intelligent design, or something to that extent. So, the 50 page intro is actually them saying "we think Darwinian evolution is stupid." The original plan had been for them to pass out all the copies today, the 19th...however for whatever reason they did it yesterday instead, much to the dismay of several groups that had supposedly advertised plans to get as many copies of the book as they could and tear out the front 50 pages.
As usual, you have the two extremes of people, those who become inexplicably furious and hate everything this guy, Ray Comfort, stands for...or that they think he stands for, whatever. And...you have the opposite end, or people who think it's amazing and love everything he stands for...or think he stands for...yeah. Then there's people like me, who don't really care. Based on my observations, I think the majority of people, whether religious or atheist, are in my boat. This guy might not know anything about science or biology, but plenty or people publish or report all kinds of things that they don't have any clue about, and make themselves look like idiots. That's just life; we deal with it.
The interesting thing here...they guy was here at our campus. I mean, I saw him standing with a bunch of people he came with on bruin walk, talking with students...he had a whole crowd around him listening. Of course, several students were coming up demanding to debate his claims about evolution with him, I guess in the hopes of making the guys look stupid or clueless. I kind of felt sorry for the students trying to argue, because the guys here passing out the books didn't actually care about debating evolution/creation. They just wanted to talk about Jesus and the whole dying for our sins thing.
I was actually fairly impressed. Ray Comfort and his gang basically drew out a chalk circle on the ground, and set up two boxes inside for people to stand on. They would talk for a while, then invite students into the circle one by one to ask questions, raise concerns, or just speak their mind. It was actually a rather respectful setting overall, and the emphasis was really on the concept that 'one day, you're going to die...what are your plans next?' One student came up shouting "Are you prepared to discuss your claims in your book?" and the guy was just, "No, maybe we can meet for lunch later if you want."
Now you guys know me...two things that tend to annoy me are people who waste countless hours debating evolution and creation, and people who get up on a soap box and just preach out in the open to random people walking by. But, I was rather impressed with these guys...they didn't annoy me. The questions and discussions remained cordial from what I saw, and afterward I talk with two friends of mine about what they thought of the entire presentation. Granted, I assume the guy is ignorant about a lot of things, but then again just about everyone I ever meet is. I learn more and more as I do research and interact with people...people generally don't know what they're talking about. We cite data without looking up the original sources, we make claims about things we don't fully understand, and we're quick to point out when someone else does those same things. We can't, in good conscience, single out people who talk about things they don't understand, when we ourselves do the same thing.
As an engineer, I'm trained to let my data do the talking for me. I do my best to keep that standard, but sometimes I have slip ups too. Someone will point out a data point I missed, or point out an inconsistency in my argument. That's life; we learn and move on.
But yeah, some snapshots of the fun the past few days. Now, back to work.
However, do no fear, for being the brilliant engineer that I am, I have solved our problem of student fees. Check out the note I wrote on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/notes/matt-silverman/matts-solution-to-student-fee-hikes/218887399672
I know, it's the perfect solution. What can I say?
But anyway, many were out protesting the measures the reagents we taking today and yesterday. The police were all lined up, ready to strike the students down at any moment with the massive firepower of their tasers and pellet gun thingies. I heard about police using tasers on students the first day, so today I was like "Oh, sweet, I wanna go and get tasered!"
So, yes, Matt has done the thing he has never done before...I actually went out amidst an entire group of people protesting...and survived. Looking back, it's actually hard for me to imagine myself being there. It's kind of like putting a drop of oil in a bucket of water...two things just don't mix. They were singing all these different chants I couldn't understand, waving signs that didn't particularly make sense; all in all a typical protest I'd expect. I saw signs about everything from demanding increased lab safety to a sign that said "Black liberation through socialist reformation!"
I will say, though, that I was deceived. Not once did I get tasered or shot at, nor did I get to watch anyone else getting tasered or shot at. My once in a lifetime event being at a protest, and I didn't even get to experience the stuff I went there for! What a rip off!
But that's not all the excitement we've had at UCLA. I heard about this a while back, but I guess some group published a 150 year anniversary of Origin of Species book, with almost the whole book in it (minus like 1 figure I think) and a 50 page intro in the beginning. The catch? The organization distributing them at all these college campuses is actually an advocate of intelligent design, or something to that extent. So, the 50 page intro is actually them saying "we think Darwinian evolution is stupid." The original plan had been for them to pass out all the copies today, the 19th...however for whatever reason they did it yesterday instead, much to the dismay of several groups that had supposedly advertised plans to get as many copies of the book as they could and tear out the front 50 pages.
As usual, you have the two extremes of people, those who become inexplicably furious and hate everything this guy, Ray Comfort, stands for...or that they think he stands for, whatever. And...you have the opposite end, or people who think it's amazing and love everything he stands for...or think he stands for...yeah. Then there's people like me, who don't really care. Based on my observations, I think the majority of people, whether religious or atheist, are in my boat. This guy might not know anything about science or biology, but plenty or people publish or report all kinds of things that they don't have any clue about, and make themselves look like idiots. That's just life; we deal with it.
The interesting thing here...they guy was here at our campus. I mean, I saw him standing with a bunch of people he came with on bruin walk, talking with students...he had a whole crowd around him listening. Of course, several students were coming up demanding to debate his claims about evolution with him, I guess in the hopes of making the guys look stupid or clueless. I kind of felt sorry for the students trying to argue, because the guys here passing out the books didn't actually care about debating evolution/creation. They just wanted to talk about Jesus and the whole dying for our sins thing.
I was actually fairly impressed. Ray Comfort and his gang basically drew out a chalk circle on the ground, and set up two boxes inside for people to stand on. They would talk for a while, then invite students into the circle one by one to ask questions, raise concerns, or just speak their mind. It was actually a rather respectful setting overall, and the emphasis was really on the concept that 'one day, you're going to die...what are your plans next?' One student came up shouting "Are you prepared to discuss your claims in your book?" and the guy was just, "No, maybe we can meet for lunch later if you want."
Now you guys know me...two things that tend to annoy me are people who waste countless hours debating evolution and creation, and people who get up on a soap box and just preach out in the open to random people walking by. But, I was rather impressed with these guys...they didn't annoy me. The questions and discussions remained cordial from what I saw, and afterward I talk with two friends of mine about what they thought of the entire presentation. Granted, I assume the guy is ignorant about a lot of things, but then again just about everyone I ever meet is. I learn more and more as I do research and interact with people...people generally don't know what they're talking about. We cite data without looking up the original sources, we make claims about things we don't fully understand, and we're quick to point out when someone else does those same things. We can't, in good conscience, single out people who talk about things they don't understand, when we ourselves do the same thing.
As an engineer, I'm trained to let my data do the talking for me. I do my best to keep that standard, but sometimes I have slip ups too. Someone will point out a data point I missed, or point out an inconsistency in my argument. That's life; we learn and move on.
But yeah, some snapshots of the fun the past few days. Now, back to work.