To Do, Again.

I got a head start on vacation today. I slept late and took a nap, then showered and started cleaning up the bedroom. So I've got one more day of weekend to prepare for next week's vacation. I'm putting my to-do list up here mostly so that it can be amended by ojouchan if necessary.

Things to do (mostly on Friday but generally by Sunday night):

• Get a haircut.
• Visit Disneyland for a Princess and the Frog discount thingie (this is the most likely to-be-done to be dumped) (Done, but now I can't find the card!)
• Get quarters from bank.
• Get cheap cell phone. (Number above)
• Buy Eid gift for future brother-in-law.
• Do laundry.
• Pack. (Mostly done, but needs some finishing touches.)
• Finish dishes. (Not completely, but all potentially stinky things were taken care of.)
• Take out the trash.
• Arrange the DVR so that the hard drive doesn't overflow.
• Write about El Verde Origins (still playing through Sunday, use code VERDEBCT for $7 off the ticket price tomorrow and Saturday night!).
• Return library books

Things to remember to pack:

• Ipod
• facial tissues
• Netbook
• Eid gift for future brother-in-law
• Cheap cell phone
• Clothes
• Nice clothes
• Chargers (iPod, cell phone, DS)
• Baby mouse ears from Disneyland

"Oil of LA" and Carter-Higgins Hall

From Green LA Girl, I saw "Oil of LA" a short web video about the oil rigs that continue to exist all over Los Angeles, tucked away into corners, and often camouflaged completely.

Unlike the video's narrator, I have known about these rigs for a long time. The basic wells that operate in the open are hard to miss once you know to look for them. And though I knew that well-hidden wells like the ones profiled in this video existed, I'd never taken the time to look for them.

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Lotería Chicana gives links to the protests at UCLA over a 32% fee hike at the UC system. A tent city" is hosting protesters, campus buildings were occupied, and to take advantage of the teaching moment, "a chicanco/chicana studies class [was] held outside, on the steps of Campbell Hall, explaining the history of the Black Panthers assasinated there and some reasons behind the occupation."

Lotería Chicana also quotes from the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, which in turn quotes James Morill on the subject of raising fees to cover the costs of the university:

his notion is, of course, an incomprehensible repudiation of the whole philosophy of a successful democracy premised upon an educated citizenry. It negates the whole concept of wide-spread educational opportunity made possible by the state university idea. It conceives college training as a personal investment for profit instead of a social investment.

No realistic and unrealizable counter-proposal for some vast new resource for scholarship aid and loans can compensate for a betrayal of the "American Dream" of equal opportunity to which our colleges and universities, both private and public, have been generously and far-sightedly committed. But the proposal persists as some kind of panacea, some kind of release from responsibility from the pocketbook burdens of the cherished American idea and tradition.

It is an incredible proposal to turn back from the world-envied American accomplishment of more than a century.