Beer Week

2015 Corvallis Beer Week is here.

If the blog seems even less active (as if!) or less coherent than normal, this is why. Sorry, not sorry.

Aw Yiss!

Motherfuckin' Beer Week!

That's pretty much my reaction. Gonna be a good week.

Coincidence?

Or did FSM (praise his noodly appendages!) arrange for a little display of solidarity in the sky now that Oregon finally entered the modern world yesterday?

Photo credit: Corvallis Gazette-Times

It's about damn time people!

Updated because I meant to add this random musical interlude also, too:

Maybe this election cycle we can also fully get our shit together and take care of that other thing that we used to be one of the leaders on:

Maybe.

Old Fogey Faculty Friday

5000 new freshmen just spent the last week moving into the dorms on campus. This is how I feel when trying to ride my bike around campus right now.

[something something getoffamylawn something]

It's Always Rainy In Oregon

Or, y'know, not.

Although we seem to have broken the planet, it looks like Oregon might be a pretty nice place to be, at least until the hordes of ravenous humanity fleeing the desolation of what was once California arrive.

Hopefully they won't show up until after the weekend. I have plans.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian, cont. Again.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian has a new article in today's campus paper. (See here and here for the previous installments if you can stand it.)

Today we get the pleasure anguish of reading yet another article about same-sex marriage. Because nobody else in the media is talking about it from that super-special-snowflake of glibertarian perspective. Or something. At least the glibertarians usually want to allow same sex marriage, like sane people should. Unfortunately that's typically where the sanity stops with them, and indeed we'll see that here as well.

As with the last installment in this series, he starts off in semi-sane mode, if you're willing to ignore the usual "government must stay out of governing" angle:

Since the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against gay marriage last week, the bandwagon for marriage equality returned. However, the real issue remains dormant on both sides. We should not be asking government to give us “marriage equality.” Instead, the government should have no part in marriage.

Of course, it immediately continues to accelerate downhill from there:

Marriage has existed longer than the government. Marriage is not a product of the government. Many people believe marriage comes from religion and in America, we have the separation of church and state, but many other ideas of marriage exist, as well. Regardless of any one view, why does the government regulate marriage when it should not?

That's some awesometastic sentence construction there. Good thing you don't write for a newspaper or anything. But yes, why does the evil government have an interest in regulating marriage? It's not like society has any interest in encouraging healthy relationships between people. That's why we also don't regulate any sorts of violence between individuals. And have no regulations whatsoever about interaction between folks in various transactions and how various people treat other people. Because America! FREEDUMB! Fuck yeah! WOLVERINES!!!

Oh wait, what do you mean we do have all sorts of laws and regulations about all sorts of relationships between people? Contracts and such between folks that want to conduct trade without the threat of violence? Oh, yeah, we do! How silly of me.

But still, this one particular form of relationship is one the government should stay completely out of. Uh, because freedom, I guess? Let's see what he thinks:

The government requires marriage licenses in order to call a couple married. But what business of the government's is it if two people want to, and do, get married? The government should not have any rules about it. The government even requires marriage licenses. Why? The original intent of marriage licenses was to prevent interracial marriages. Marriage license laws began in the mid-1800s to stop whites from marrying anyone who was not white. By the 1920s, 38 states had state laws prohibiting the marriage of whites with other ethnicities.

As is his typical pattern, now he's just started making shit up. While he's correct about about states in the '20s specifically using laws to prevent interracial marriage, his assertion that the "original intent" was to prevent them is laughably false. Marriage licenses have been around since at least the middle ages, and were all about contracts between families. That is something glibertarians usually like, sacredfreemarket and all that. I should really stop being surprised by this guy's complete lack of historic knowledge and/or utter contempt for facts, but whatever.

At this point we know how this is going to end, and indeed it proceeds down through all the standard glibertarian tropes of evil government stealing people's money and freedom. I can't be arsed to dissect the rest of it, so just read it if you must. Here's the concluding paragraph:

Marriage equality may be the big uproar right now, but we need to look at the bigger picture. The government erodes our freedoms, and turning to them for more laws and oversight will only wear away at the few freedoms we have left. We need to tell the government to get out of marriage, to get out of our lives, and not return.

At this point I think he only wants the government to stop regulating marriage so he'll finally be able to marry Ayn Rand's corpse. I hope somebody's keeping an eye on her grave.

Modes of Transport

For the discerning modern college student there are a variety of popular modes of transport. We shall examine here two traditional examples.

First we have the simple motor car, a favorite of many. Drawbacks include parking issues on a cramped campus (illustrated here by illegally parking in a faculty lot), and the inherent douchiness of driving around a $114,200 Audi R8 as a college student.

We shall assume that as the day brightened and the frosty morning chill wore off, this student decided to drop by home and pick up a more seasonal and breezy ride. Also a favorite among students, the motor scooter offers that can't-be-beat wind-in-the-hair motoring experience with a bonus of abundant free parking near campus. Additional pluses on our example below include the forward-mounted rocket launcher and advanced fan-propulsion and lifting rotor system to evade pursuit by campus security. Far superior to any mere German sports coupe on a sunny day.

Compare & Contrast

New OSU "Beaver" logo:

Designed by the wizards at Nike, along with corresponding new uniform designs for all the various sports.

Here is the current logo that one is replacing:

That one was a redesign they did back in 2000. After the original Benny Beaver had been around since 1951. You'd think we could hang onto this one for longer than that, but I guess not.

Anyway, here is an actual beaver:

(creative commons photo credit: Tancread@flickr)

Uncanny, eh?

Evidently the students seem to like the new look, so that's good I guess. Of course the real reason for the change is most likely to encourage the thousands of idiotic football fans to buy replacement replica outfits so they can "support" their team while they watch "student athletes" continue to be exploited by the NCAA. I'm sure OSU and Nike came to a mutually profitable understanding about all this. I'm also pretty sure only a tiny portion of this (if any) will actually ever trickle down to the University's general fund. So it is, so shall it ever be.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian, cont.

I wish this wasn't part two of a continuing series.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian is at it again, with another column in today's college paper.

I can't be arsed to do a full-fledged analysis, so I'll just go through a few of the lowlights in the first few paragraphs. You can read the rest on your own if you have the brain cells to lose.

Recently, the sequester has been a big topic. Congress has been debating the sequester in an effort to strike a deal to avoid the “catastrophic” problems we would otherwise face. The political left says without an agreement, cuts would send us into another recession and people wouldn’t be able to eat. The right says that without coming to an agreement, the military would face huge cuts, leaving us vulnerable to attacks.

Ok, other than the scare quotes around "catastrophic" that's not all that bad to start. For bonus points, try to predict where he's going based on this opening paragraph. Anyway, continuing:

But the sequester isn’t alone in topics debated by Congress this year. As the calendar approached Jan. 1, Congress was debating the debt ceiling to avoid the fiscal cliff. We technically went over the fiscal cliff since a deal wasn’t made by Jan. 1. When we “went over the fiscal cliff,” nothing happened. The earth didn’t collapse inward. The sun didn’t burn out. And with the sequester, we don’t have anything to worry about either.

Ah, that's more like it! I especially love the exceedingly grand straw man cliff he fights. And "going over the fiscal cliff" now means "technically, the calendar went past fiscal cliff day and even though the issues were dealt with the next day before we had a chance to hit the ground at the bottom of the cliff, we still totally fell over that cliff." That is exactly the same thing as if the evil useless government did nothing 'cause they're a bunch of know-nothing poopyheads covered in poop.

Continuing directly:

But the real questions and debates shouldn’t center on whether Congress will make an agreement in time, or which side is correct about the repercussions if a deal isn’t made. The real question we should ask is, “Why does the decision of only 535 congressmen in Washington, D.C., control what happens to all 300 million people in the country?”

Wow. He may have managed to outdo the stupidity with this. He actually does not seem to know that our wacky system of government consists of a "representative democracy" where "we the people" elect "representatives" to "represent" us in the decision making process. Really, he doesn't understand this. Read the rest of the damn article if you don't believe me — that is the article's entire point.

He says some other really stupid shit and manages to get a bunch of stuff wrong about The Great Depression and economics (as usual) too, but I don't have the energy to go into that.

At this point I should really start taking bets on which wingnut welfare publication hires him.

Sounds of Spring

All of a sudden after a couple halfway warm days, the frogs are out in force.

Those in the midwest buried under yet another snowstorm can either take this as a taunt, or as a reminder that spring will eventually show up...

Valentine Sunset

Damn nice sunset last night:

I really like the shadow cast by Mary's Peak (approx 4200' tall) upward onto the clouds.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian

I pointed out over on Sadly, No! recently that we seem to have the state's dumbest glibertarian writing a column for the campus paper. In a state that is home to Lars Larson, taking away the "dumbest glibertarian" crown is no small feat, but this guy is trying his damndest.

(The paper's website is complete and utter crap, so don't be surprised if it barely works most of the time if you click the links.)

Here are some short snippets from a few of his columns, just so you can get a feel for the stupidity without the need for full immersion:

Less intrusive government is key for better market, consumers

One of the biggest places in which the government invades our lives is through transportation. The government built, owns and maintains most of the roads in America. But to think we need the government to do any of this remains absurd. ... Henry Ford is the most revolutionary of them all. ... Ford sold cars to the common man at an affordable price, $850. Over the next few years, the price dropped to approximately $250. The government didn’t force Ford to do it. The government hadn’t taxed people heavily to build roads yet either. Ford sold cars to people before roads existed. ... Now that roads are owned by the government, prices skyrocket due to artificial demand the government has created by printing money.

I especially like this one because the lead sentence in the article is: "Today’s America consists of massive government intrusion and a lack of knowledge of history." And then he proceeds to completely fuck up the history of transportation in America. I mean "Ford sold cars to people before roads existed." is just absurd on its face for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that he must almost think that Henry Ford actually invented the wheel or something. Regardless, a nice quick search for road history in America might have led an actual thinking person to the League of American Bicyclists history page, where we find this:

The League began as the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) in 1880 -- Newport, R.I. was the location of our founding meeting -- and was responsible for defending the rights of cyclists from its start. The League of American Wheelmen is credited with getting paved roads in this country before the reign of the automobile.

And it's barely worth getting into the utter absurdity of thinking that private industry could have somehow built the railroads and interstate freeway system without government help. He doesn't even know basic history of the Transcontinental Railroad:

The construction and operation of the line was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War. Congress supported it with 30-year U.S. government bonds and extensive land grants of government-owned land. Completion of the railroad was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line. It was one of the crowning achievements in the crossing of plains and high mountains westward by the Union Pacific and eastward by the Central Pacific. Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, Utah, the road established a mechanized transcontinental transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West.

Yep, no government help there. Stupid government, can't do anything right!

Here's another gem:

Trillion-dollar coin will hyperinflate US currency

Although the U.S. government “averted” the fiscal cliff, a new proposal has risen that could send us maybe not off the fiscal cliff, but into hyperinflation and total destruction of the U.S. dollar. Paul Krugman, and others who have power or influence, but still don’t understand economics, have proposed the minting of a trillion-dollar coin.

(emphasis mine)

Yep, you guessed it, of course the rest of the article is about OMG FIAT CURRENCY! and ending the Federal Reserve and such. The best part of this though is that an earlier article is:

If only people understood economics

If people had a firm understanding of economics and the free market, we could have a much better world. ... Too many people comment on the subject of economics without a firm knowledge and understanding of it. The Austrian School of Economics has been the only school of economic thought that explains real-life behavior.

That really does just not need any further comment, the stupid stands tall and proud, all on it's own.

UPDATE:

In the comments ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© helpfully provided an excellent link to a really good series of articles about the Austrian school. Just in case nobody reads the comments, and so you don't have to dig up the links to the other two parts, here they are:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

And here's a podcast the author did covering the series and another article by the same author that is about the Austrian school and the constant libertarian yakking about gold.

All really good stuff, thanks ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©!

Clock tower

Couldn't be any reason for me to take special notice of this clock tower today.  Nope.

This second pic just shows the serenity of a deserted campus.  Thankfully campus is deserted because everybody's on break, not because there's some madman shooting the place up.

Fuck.  People are awful, hideous creatures.

Vintage

This post is dedicated to a certain testicle's Instagram endorsement.

Pics taken on my walk to the bus stop tonight. No Instagrams were harmed --or used-- in the creation of this blahg post.

FORGOTTEN DRUNKEN NIGHT PHOTO UPDATE:

Not sure whether I prefer this version that doesn't really indicate the scale:

Or this version that adds the bleakness of the barbed wire/chain link:

Woeful Wednesday

With the holiday season in full swing and the weather exceptionally shitty, my typical seasonal sadness starts to kick in. The ebb and flow of friends/acquaintances moving through a college town can effect that too.  This song is the perfect complement to that feeling, but wasn't on the ute-oob. Since blooger doesn't seem to want to let me upload just audio, I put together a quick video with some sunset photos I took in summer.  Sorry about the "Ken Burns" effect -- I know it's the standard cop-out of quick videos.  You'll live.

Lunch View

Not a bad spot to spend a random Wednesday afternoon. Well, a few minutes of the afternoon anyway -- this is the Dimple Hill summit. It's a great spot for a lunchtime mountain bike ride.