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Things have been a bit slow lately regarding the UC protests, which worries me.

However I did come across this interesting article from Global.org, which puts some nice graphs to the situation to show why students are so upset over the 32% increase.

To summarize, the cut from state funding accounts for only about 3% of the UC’s total budget, which is less than the salaries for the highest paid UC employees.

The article goes on to elaborate on many of the problems of the UC system currently, and why the regents are taking the actions that they have. If you have the time, give it a read — you’ll learn a lot.

Highlights of November 2009:

• November was a pretty steady month overall — there were no especially large bursts or slumps, just a pretty typical level of fluctuation.
• November did about as well as October. I received about 100 less hits in November, which isn’t a significant amount at all — plus November has one less day than October!
• By far the most popular post of the month was about funny Google searches, raking in 21% of my total traffic, as well as 22% of my traffic from search engines alone. The next biggest post was about reasons why long distance relationships fail, which brought in about 2,000 hits.
• A whopping 72% of my traffic came from search engines this month. While I do enjoy the periodic StumbleUpon bursts, I’m grateful that I have a reliable and constant source of traffic from search engines.

Since 2009′s almost over, how about we see how the year went for everyone with a new poll?

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During my freshman year at college, I realized that one of the strangest experiences you have is when you go back home for the first time.

When I came back the first time last year, I was amazed at how bizarre it felt. In the month and a half that I had been away from home, I had changed and grown in a lot of different ways, yet I had barely noticed at all. I assumed that my home must somehow be ‘different’, that surely it and the people who live there must have changed too.

But nothing changed — there weren’t any major changes to the town, my bedroom still looked the exact same, and I still had to fight with my neighbor for my parking spot. Because I had been gone for so long, things felt unfamiliar, yet I knew this is how things had been. The weirdness, I think, came from being placed back into the exact same routine and role that I had been in for most of my life, yet having it feel weird and abnormal because I had adjusted to my college life. Keep reading »

In light of the protests in California over the increases in higher costs, I’ve been following Occupy CA, a blog that’s had pretty accurate information from the student’s side of things over these protests.

Anywho, Saturday night Occupy CA posted that the Kerr Hall occupation at UCSC would probably end that night — administrators had hinted at police coming before midnight. I walked up to Kerr Hall to try to see, but nothing much happened during the time I was there. About 40 or 50 students were outside singing songs to pass the time (in addition to students occupying the building). Midnight came and went with no sign of police, so eventually I headed inside.

As it would turn out, the police came around 7 or 8 AM and then forced their way through. Students were ultimately allowed to leave peacefully without arrest, but not all went as well as it could:

Early Sunday morning, Chancellor Blumenthal and Provost Kliger turned the campus into an effective police state by stationing riot police at all entrances to refuse entry to everyone. In a blatant attempt to create a media blackout as they prepared for the police attack, even a Santa Cruz Sentinel photographer was refused access to the campus for some time. (They had already cut cruznet service, the campus wifi system, in the Kerr Hall area.)

At one point during the confrontation, students and neutral faculty observers were cornered by riot police on an outdoor balcony. As the police advanced towards the students and faculty, one faculty member fell from the balcony, injuring his back. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance. The student occupiers are very concerned about the well-being of the faculty member and denounce the administration’s use of force that caused his injury.

The police cleared the entry leading to Kerr Hall by pushing through the outdoor crowd, at times striking students in the chest with their clubs. Upon entering the lobby of Kerr Hall, they issued an ultimatum to students that they could leave peacefully and be arrested one-by-one outside. The students refused this outright. The police backed-off and offered to let the students leave without arrest through a rear entry to Kerr Hall; this offer was accepted immediately by the occupiers, who cleared out of the building at this moment.

Over 75 students have already volunteered to help clean the space in Kerr Hall that was occupied; there are concerns, however, that the University will refuse this offer in order to exaggerate costs associated with the occupation. Source Keep reading »

In light of the 32% increase in UC student fees, protests have erupted on at least four of the UC campuses. While these protests have been peaceful, they haven’t been without incident, and many students have been arrested for occupying buildings.

Personally, I stand for those who protest, and I really hope all of this continues to escalate. Whether or not it will, I cannot say, but I do believe the students and faculty who protest are entirely just. Raising the costs so drastically defeats the purpose public higher education, which is meant to be cheap and accessible. For years, the UC system has been a leveling-ground of sorts, where no matter what financial background you came from, you at least had a shot of becoming something. I believe protests should not only occur on campuses, but also at Sacramento where our state legislature has failed us.

So far, four campuses have running protests on them: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, and UC Santa Cruz. Here’s what each campus has been doing: Keep reading »

I’ve been getting progressively more spam comments lately, and I think it’s time I reactive WP-SpamFree, a WordPress plugin that helps cut back on spam. I used it earlier, but I heard that a couple of comments from legitimate readers were labeled as spam by it.

However I’m going to try again and see if things work out a bit better this time. If you find that your comments are being labeled as spam or blocked, kindly use the Contact page to inform me so that I can disable the plugin if necessary.

Hoh boy. I knew this was a likely possibility, but it still hits pretty hard. Today, Mark Yudof and the UC regents have decided to raise student fees by 32% for UC students.

California has been in a pretty big financial crisis due to the recession and other reasons, and the effects have been pretty rough on higher education. Massive cuts have been already made to the UC system, the Cal State (CSU) system, and community colleges statewide. Now, the UC system joins the other two in experiencing giant leaps in costs.

Right now, student fees run about $8,000 for the year — a 32% increase brings that to over $10,000. This, of course, doesn’t include costs of living on campus (or off), which will bring the cost of a year’s schooling to as much as $30,000. Financial aid is given to some, but not to all. Keep reading »

After much hype and hope, Left 4 Dead 2 will finally be out in just a few hours.

Because Steam is completely awesome and knows exactly what most gamers want, I’m getting the downloading done now with a nice pre-load (I’m currently at 20% and rising!). I’m trying to get some homework out of the way now because I know I’ll inevitably be up late playing this and spending most of tomorrow playing it.

I’ll post and let everyone know how it is!