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Column: Cosmic Relevance

Opinion
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When I bought my ticket for the three-day music festival known as Outside Lands, I knew the dangers surrounding the event.  Although I was excited to experience a music festival, there was the lurking paradox of my youth culture — how can one enjoy oneself surrounded by the term “hipster”?

I was running the risk of drowning in a sea of tight jeans and a cloud of hand-rolled cigarettes.  Determined to build a perfect case against hipsters, I would go to be the champion who destroyed them forever. But first, I had to know what I was looking for.

My best definition of hipsterdom is from Urban Dictionary, as the walking and vocal rejection of the “culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers.”1

Easy enough, I just had to find the jerks who were looking down on the less fashionable, openly displaying their artistic savvy.

However, when I got to the festival, some of my favorite attractions appeared to be objectively hipster.  For example, I found myself enjoying the abundance of indie bands, the display of local culinary talent at Lamblands, the microbrews at Beer Lands and the $5 Blue Bottle Coffee.

But weren’t these features the point of the festival?  I wasn’t trying to be hipster, I was just trying to have a good time.  My enemy was still undefined.

Waiting for the last show of the weekend, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I found myself in the crowd with my friend Alex. His phone buzzed and our new friend Cameron was on the other end, wanting to know where we were in the crowd.

He came to Outside Lands by himself, determined to live it up despite getting ditched by his friends. We met him at the festival, and now he wanted to watch the last set with us.

Even though one might describe him as a stereotypical hipster, with gauged earrings and an artsy 1880’s style mustache, we liked the guy.  He never bragged about his taste, and he never made us feel inferior. So we told him where we were.  Miraculously he snuck his way to the front and found us.

As the Red Hot Chili Peppers came on, waves from the Rock Goddess muse pulsed through my veins; I had my epiphany! The festival made it possible for us to all enjoy the moment together as friends, one old, one new.  This celebration of life hipsters couldn’t touch.

Over the rock and roll, Cameron turns to me and shouts, “I can see them!  I’m close enough that I can actually see the band!” If we hadn’t met each other, it is very possible that Cameron would have never made it to the front of the crowd.

With the Chili Peppers jamming and blaring in sight, Cameron howls, “Don’t kill the weekend!”  This kid is having a great time and I feel like I’ve done something to help.

So it was never about hipsters; it was about assholes.  In my search for hipsters, I was looking for people who would try to ruin other’s happiness based off a pretentious self-image. A hipster says, “I’m having more fun than you.”  But, asshole is the better term for this type of concert goer.

An asshole cuts you in the bathroom line, spills your beer, pushes you to get to the front of the stage, and generally disregards the concert community. Everyone wants the same good time, so this exclusion denies the reality of the shared experience.

Therefore, these “hipsters” are missing out on the greatest gift the festival has to offer — genuine human interaction.  I offered kindness to an outsider and found it reciprocated.  By the end of the day, with multiple handshakes and goodbyes, I could call Cameron a friend.

Set in Golden Gate Park, there is obvious connection between Outside Lands and the glorified Summer of Love.  As Alex put it, “we are in the Summer of Love round infinity.”  With a ticket price, the hippie ethos has survived, bringing a community closer through music.

Although the assholes have the potential to make you lose faith in humanity, it can be one person who makes all the difference.

 

If you want to go around campus destroying fixie bikes with DANIEL HERMAN, you can email him at dsherman@ucdavis.edu.

Negative feedback is a plus

Science Editor
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The brain is one of the most fascinating and intricate structures in the human body. One of its most basic functions is to store information in the form of memory. In a study published August 18th in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Mark Goldman, joint professor in the Neurology, Physiology and Behavior Department at UC Davis and the Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science at the UC Davis Medical Center, and Sukbin Lim, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis, explored how negative feedback mechanisms stabilize memories against the test of time.

According to Goldman, one essential question neuroscience researchers have been trying to figure out is how neurons, which typically only remain activated for very short amounts of time, can maintain memories over long periods.

“The classic explanation for how neurons can respond for the many seconds that we can maintain an item in mind during short-term memory is that neurons may be interconnected through positive feedback loops,” Goldman said in an email.

A positive feedback loop is when a disturbance to a set point causes a reaction that, in turn, amplifies the disturbance. In this case, nerve cells being activated in response to a stimulus would cause a loop that maintains the firing of nerve cells, thus enabling us to “remember” that stimulus.

However, Goldman and his team believe that positive feedback alone is too unstable to maintain memories in the long run. Without a system of checks and balances, the positive feedback could go on indefinitely and amplify, potentially leading to some disastrous consequences, much in the way that speaking into a microphone too loudly produces that awful screeching sound.

This is where negative feedback comes in. Where positive feedback tries to amplify a signal, negative feedback works to prevent the strength of a signal from becoming weaker or stronger.

“The key idea of our model was to show that the circuitry of memory-storing regions of the brain’s neocortex may include ‘slip detectors’ that detect when a memory representation is changing — either growing, as in the microphone screeching example, or decaying to zero, which would cause the memory to be quickly forgotten — and use negative feedback to offset this ‘memory slip’”, Goldman said.

In order to simplify the unfathomably complex connections that nerve cells in the brain make with each other, scientists often think of them as if they were circuits in a computer. Goldman and his team took advantage of this fact and utilized mathematical models that mimicked such circuitry. In doing so, he was able to demonstrate the viability of his proposed model.

“We may have identified a fundamental building block of memory storage, at the level of neural circuitry.  Hopefully, future work can build up from this finding to start to put together how we store more complex information,” Goldman said.

Though this finding marks a substantial step forward in better understanding memory at the most fundamental level, on a more macroscopic scale, we are still more in the dark than we would like to be.

According to Charan Ranganath, a memory researcher and professor for the Psychology Department at UC Davis, the most challenging part of studying memory is that experts cannot agree on what exactly they are studying. He said there is a general consensus in the field that there are multiple types of memory, and that those multiple types of memory should correlate to different areas in the brain. However, exactly how many types of memory and exactly where they are located remains up for debate.

“I might think that I am measuring one form of memory, but in fact use a measure that is sensitive to different kinds of memory. It would be like a physicist or a chemist running an experiment and not being sure whether s/he is measuring heat, light, sound or some combination of these factors,” Ranganath said in an email.

Fortunately, dedicated researchers such as Goldman and Ranganath are doing everything they can to further understanding. By doing so, they enable us to have a better grasp on our own minds and potentially develop new techniques for treating people with memory disorders.

 

KYLE SCROGGINS can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Students enrich summers with cultural immersion

Features Editor
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Students enrich summers with cultural immersion

While most students welcome the journey of heading back home after a year away at college and many choose to work locally, a small group of Aggies take a route that leads them overseas.

Both exercise biology majors, third-year Evan Shum and second-year Jillian Giblin spent their summers immersing themselves in foreign cultures.

Shum traveled to Thane, India, a city 40 minutes outside the cultural hub of Mumbai, as a participant in the Tata International Social Entrepreneurship Scheme (ISES).

Tata is the single largest India-based business group in the United States, owning well-known companies like Jaguar, Land Rover and Tetley. The Tata ISES program is designed to bring foreign students to different parts of India for two months to work on corporate sustainability projects for local Tata companies.

“One of Tata’s fundamental values is that the community is not where the business works,” Shum said. “It’s the reason for the business’ existence.”

The highly selective internship program began in 2008 and invites students of all majors from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics and Cambridge University to apply.

This year, Shum was the only student from UC Davis participating in the program, with about 20 other students from the other universities.

“I think it’s an attractive program in that it’s a very unique opportunity to be embedded for [two] months,” said Niharika Chibber Joe, General Manager North America at TATA Sons Limited. “We are lucky in that we get really high quality students.”

Students in the program are placed in varying positions across the country, from corporate office work to more travel-intensive projects. Overall, the program aims to bring different perspectives to Tata, encouraging international understanding and cooperation.

“It gives [students] experience of having worked for an international company,” Chibber Joe said. “They really have a solid line item on their resume.”

Shum specifically worked for Tata Capital, with the job of coming up with an interactive learning module to educate Tata Capital employees in India about global warming.

Within this project, Shum was asked to research the effects of global warming on society and corporate sustainability, playing with the idea that running a business requires one to take into account the environmental, social and economic aspects of the venture.

“We are expected to come up with all the details, all the transitions, what the portal learning experience will be,” Shum said. “You have to give a perspective from your own background, that they wouldn’t receive being here at Tata. You have to what they need.”

On social issues, Shum worked with various non-governmental organizations regarding affirmative action, women’s rights and children’s education, in order to inform and encourage Tata Capital employees to get involved with such initiatives.

“What was really unique about this project is that they don’t give you a lot of structure,” Shum said. “It had no standards, no guidelines on what they want. You have to be willing to think outside the box and be innovative.”

Another part of the project dealt with the economics of being environmentally responsible. Shum worked with emission and cost calculations of Tata Capital to compare sustainability numbers.

Shum said although he enjoyed working on the social aspect of the project the most, the environmental parts were more mentally and academically challenging.

“As an exercise biology major, you learn chemistry and biology,” Shum said. “It was hard to be exposed to a subject [that] you’re supposed to learn from scratch and then educate other people about.”

Shum was also able to delve into the Indian culture headfirst. He visited tourist locations like the Taj Mahal and also saw extreme poverty firsthand.

“From the feedback we have received over the years, it’s a life-changing experience for [students],” Chibber Joe said. “They are really grateful to be in India under this experience, it’s given them a whole new perspective.”

Shum recommended the program to all UC Davis students and plans to return to India at some point in the future as well.

“It has been as much a humbling experience as it has been a learning experience,” Shum said.

Like Shum, Giblin, who studied abroad in Granada, Spain through the Sol Education Abroad program this past summer, attested to becoming more culturally aware.

“Before I went to Spain, I spent so much time at UC Davis with academics and work, always busy getting things done,” Giblin said. “In Spain, its a much more laid back lifestyle. It’s not just about me — it’s more about my family and my community, and being a part of something bigger. It was a very different lifestyle, but one that I value more.”

Although Giblin’s time was different from Shum’s in terms of academics, she does believe that learning about another way of life is something all students who have studied abroad can relate to.

“It definitely takes you out of your comfort zone and gives you an opportunity to meet people in different cultures. To see how people live differently, eat differently,” said Jane Giblin, Giblin’s mother.

Sol Education Abroad offered Giblin the opportunity to live with a Spanish host family, with whom she would speak, eat and live like a Spaniard.

“While I was there, I got to learn all the customs of Spain, I got to eat typical Spanish food that they cook at home and then got to learn how to make the food too,” Giblin said.

Apart from receiving the cultural experience, Giblin took two Spanish language intensive courses at the University of Granada. Giblin said teaching styles in Spain were different from those in the U.S. and that her Spanish has dramatically improved.

Before her trip, Giblin believed it was important to speak Spanish for career reasons. Now, her reasons for pursuing the language have expanded greatly.

“After going to Spain, it’s more than just something I would do for a job. I appreciate their culture, and I enjoy speaking Spanish,” Giblin said. “Being able to connect with people and speak another language is something that I realized is really important to me.”

Both Shum and Giblin agreed that their experiences abroad have changed the way they live in a positive way, and recommend all UC Davis students in all majors to try it as well.

“It’s an opportunity you will never forget,” Giblin said. “We live with a very focused and directed path of academics here in the U.S. But with study abroad, you learn a different way of life and realize that not everyone lives like we do.”

 

RITIKA IYER can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

Race for Big West Title begins

Sports Editor
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As the Aggies begin their quest for a Big West Title, they may look upon their recent success — winning five of their last six preseason games — to instill confidence heading into conference action.

Much of this confidence started with an upset victory over then-18th ranked California in four sets. UC Davis’ win against Cal marked the fourth time the Aggies have beaten a Pac-12 team in the last eight years.

The Aggies would then go on to defeat their Western Athletic Conference foes CSU Bakersfield in another four-set victory.

“In many ways Bakersfield was one of the toughest opponents we played this far,” said coach Jamie Holmes. “They were scrappy, they were edgy, they were playing without fear. Getting that [win] was one of the most significant [wins] in the preseason.”

Despite suffering a tough loss in their opening road conference matchup against CSU Northridge in five sets, coach Holmes was filled with optimism heading into upcoming matchups between CSU Fullerton and UC Riverside.

“It was heartbreaking to lose that match [against CSU Northridge],” Holmes said. “However, the team has presented what [their] goals are, and these next two conference matchups give us an opportunity to chip away at those goals.”

As Big West play continues, UC Davis will have to watch for Fullerton’s senior stars Alyses Hensley and Bre Moreland, who have a team high 146 digs. Fullerton hopes to bounce back with a successful conference home opener after their road loss against sixth-ranked Hawai’i in straight sets.

From there the Aggies, who will be playing with limited rest, will have to square off against a UC Riverside team that has seen better days. The Highlanders are currently 1-12 overall, and have lost their conference opener to Hawai’i in straight sets. However, the Aggies must not overlook Riverside or sophomore outside hitter Ashley Cox, who has a team-high 115 kills.

UC Davis enters road play with an 8-6 overall record and an 0-1 conference record.

– Shaun Moncada

Arts Week

Arts Editor
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THEATER

Monty Python’s SPAMALOT
Friday, Oct. 4 — Sunday, Oct. 6, 8:15 p.m., $9-$18
Davis Musical Theater Company, 607 Pena Dr.
Winner of a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2005, SPAMALOT is a musical that tells the tale of King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Spoofed from the classic film comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, this hilarious show features showgirls, cows and killer rabbits.

MUSIC

2030
Thursday, Oct. 3 — 8 p.m., free, ages 21+
City Hall Tavern, 226 F St.
The local comedy duo 2030 that produces and performs music for college crowds and local venues will be performing for the tavern’s UCD College Night. Come for a few laughs and $4 drinks.

Miss Lonely Hearts
Friday, Oct. 4 — 9 p.m., $5, ages 21+
Sophia’s Thai Kitchen and Bar, 129 E St.
This band remains true to America’s roots in Rock n’ Roll and Country. With the danceable tempo and drunken, hymnal vocals, their songs create an energy that is sure to stir up the crowd.

Spirits of the Red City
Saturday, Oct. 5 — 9 p.m., $5, ages 21+
Sophia’s Thai Kitchen and Bar, 129 E St.
A collective of friends and diverse musicians, Spirits of the Red City’s sound is an eclectic mix of 60s classics, traditional folk and modernist composers. Described as “playing with airy intimacy,” National Public Radio shows praise for this Minneapolis-based indie folk band.

Stewart Goodyear
Saturday, Oct. 5 — 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., 3 – 6:30 p.m. and/or 8:30 – 11:30 p.m., $37.50 – $80
Mondavi Center
Concerto soloist and composer Stewart Goodyear, who has performed with many of the major orchestras of the world, will play a complete set of Beethoven’s Sonatas during three programs throughout the day.

Eleanor Murray, Donald Beaman, Brian Jackson and Lauren Lavin
Wednesday, Oct. 9 — 8:30 p.m., $5 – $7 suggested donation
Third Space, 946 Olive Dr.
Come hangout at for a night of indie folk and fun vibes. Third Space hosts live music in their multi-purpose art venue twice a week.

POETRY/READINGS

Flashes of War by Katey Schultz
Friday, Oct. 4 — 7:30 p.m., free
The Avid Reader, 617 2nd St.
Award-winning author Katey Schultz discusses her book about the traumas of war. With a minimalistic style, she captures the pain of war in an acclaimed literary fiction work.

Street concert to round off Discover Davis Week

Arts Editor
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To conclude a week of discounts aimed at boosting the local economy and enticing students to become involved in the local community, Downtown Davis will be hosting a free street concert on Oct. 5 from 2 to 9 p.m.

Discover Downtown Davis Week (from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6) is a week-long jamboree of discounts given to students by over 75 downtown businesses. The Discover Downtown Davis Fall Welcome Street Concert, which is the capstone of the week, will be featuring indie bands from across northern and southern California. The event will be headlined by the San Francisco-based band The Family Crest.

“When I heard there was kind of a dead week for Fall Welcome, I thought ‘what a perfect opportunity to get the kids to be familiar with the town,'” said Nina Gatewood, marketing, arts and entertainment director of the Davis Business Association (DBA).

Gatewood, together with DBA board member Stewart Savage and Sophia’s Thai Kitchen owner Kevin Wan, have been working closely together with the UC Davis Fall Welcome Student Affairs Committee to make this event possible.

“We have a very strong art and music scene and it’s very much more condensed than, say, San Francisco where it’s all sprawled out,”  Gatewood said when asked what distinguishes Davis’ downtown from others.

Richard Ronquillo, chair of the Fall Welcome Student Affairs Committee, first proposed the idea of having a Discover Downtown Davis Week when he heard from students that one reason they chose to attend UC Davis was because “they really liked the city.”

“The Fall welcome event was initially geared more towards first-year students. But now discounts are available to all students as long as they have their ID,” Ronquillo said.

According to Ronquillo, Gatewood and Wan took the Fall welcome event to the next level when they decided to finish off the week with a free concert, something which hasn’t been done before at this scale.

Most concerts or music festivals in Davis in the past have acted as fundraisers to benefit particular organizations. This time, First Northern Bank, Sophia’s Thai Kitchen and 2407 Graphics are its primary sponsors, ensuring that this event will be free.

“This is to benefit the community, this is to benefit UC Davis, this is to get people excited about the new school year,” Wan said.

Wan said that he wanted to make sure there would be variety when booking bands for the event.

“If you listen to the first few songs and it’s not your thing, you can leave; come back an hour later, and it will be a new band. In the meantime you can go grab a gelato or a cup of coffee, explore, go to the bookstore and still be downtown,” Wan said.

Among the bands are Cold Eskimo, The Seshen, Races, Only You and Big Tree. The headliner, The Family Crest, is an orchestral indie rock band from San Francisco.

When booking artists, Wan specifically looked for energetic bands who replicate and capture all the energy of their lyrics and recorded music onstage.

“It’s kind of a pilot concert of sorts,” Wan said, since the concert is the first of its kind in Davis. But should it prove successful, there is talk that there could be many more free concerts in the future, including bigger headliners.

The free concert will be held on D Street between First and Second streets. For more information, visit davisdowntown.com/fallwelcome.

 

DANIEL STAECHELIN can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Jazz & Beat Festival celebrates its seventh year

Arts Editor
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On Oct. 4 and Oct. 5, the John Natsoulas Gallery will be hosting its seventh annual Jazz and Beat Festival. Featuring various Jazz, spoken word and dance performances, the festival celebrates the art and culture that came about in the 1950s Beat Generation.

Hosted by the Davis Cultural Action Committee, the Jazz and Beat Festival features exclusive performance the many jazz musicians, world-renowned poets and painters. These include performances from the Linda Blair Dance Group, the Cave Women, the Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet with Performance Painting by Victoria Smith, Davis High School Jazz Band with Performance Painting by Myron Stephens and a special guest musical group sponsored by the Mondavi Center.

John Natsoulas, a long-time Davis resident, is the owner of the gallery and is responsible for running the annual event and finding the local artists to participate in the festival.

“We want to celebrate these brilliant iconoclasts in an environment similar to what would have been during that era. I want to preserve the element of collaboration that was so vital to the movement. Art, poetry and music will all be accompanying one another across different stages to create a type of performance art that was unique to the Beat Generation,” Natsoulas said.

The festival celebrates the Beat Generation of the 1950s, a period of art and literary Renaissance in America during which young artists valuing anti-conformist values found liberty of expression within this group of free-thinking collaborationists. Their art lives on in intimate festivals such as this one, where some of the most intriguing art of the era will be exhibited.

“The Beatniks were young talented people, who did not necessarily have a lot of money and spoke like pseudo intellectuals, very comparable to today’s hipsters,” Natsoulas said. “They found the need for spaces where they could express themselves artistically, and that’s where the Jazz Club phenomenon came about. That’s the inspiration behind this event.”

An especially exciting part of the event is the Jack Kerouac poetry contest on Friday evening, in which many local University as well as High School students will participate. Artists get the opportunity to share their poetry in honor of one of the greatest American poets and Beatniks, Jack Kerouac, in the presence of poets such as Indigo Moor, Phil Weidman and D.R. Wagner.

“The festival gets the whole town involved, especially with the Kerouac poetry contest. In a way, it is paying homage to the Beatniks in its own right by involving the Mondavi Center, the University and the High School. It becomes a performance based on collaboration, which was a vital element of the Beat Generation,” Natsoulas said.

D.R. Wagner, a UC Davis lecturer in design, has been performing at the event for many years and will be reciting some of his poetry from two of his recently published books, Breaking and Entering and 97 Poems.

“Natsoulas does a fantastic job at picking the artists, music and poetry of the time. He really has a clear vision of the Beat Generation, and owns one of the few galleries that actually really makes sense. It’s an honor to participate,” Wagner said.

UC Davis professor, head of Davis Cultural Action Committee and poet  Andy Jones, is the master of ceremonies and organiser of the event. In the past, he taught many courses on the Beat Generation and has found it to be the center of many of his professional studies.

“The poetry contest on Friday night is a great opportunity to experience quality poetry, a great place to freely experiment with poetry. It is rare that you get to have poets performing to such phenomenal jazz ensembles,” Jones said.

Participants also have a chance at winning prizes, such as the opportunity to recite their poem in accompaniment to a world-class orchestra.

“I want the youth to be able to express themselves, and I think the poetry contest is a great opportunity for that. The festival offers different ways for younger artists to be linked to the Beat pathos. By involving the younger generation, it maintains the spirit of intellectual curiosity that is associated with the Beat Generation,” Jones said.

Admission to the event is free, and complimentary refreshments will be provided. For more information about the event, please visit natsoulas.com.

 

LARISSA MURRAY can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

Column: Progressive Philalethist

Opinion
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Imagine, if you will, a utopia. What do you see? Do you see an industrious commune devoid of property rights, where everyone works according to his ability and receives an equal payout, as Thomas More and Karl Marx proposed?

Or do you see an individualist society, one in which those who work the hardest get the most handsome rewards and laziness results in poverty, as Ayn Rand and other libertarian and objectivist thinkers suggested?

All of these philosophers set forth ideas for bettering society, and their ideas have influenced nations around the world. Every tidbit of public policy takes its ideas from some philosophical principle.

Vladimir Lenin, in attempting to build a perfect society, borrowed heavily from Marx’s Capital. His goal, of course, was to create a classless society like the one Marx theorized.

When implemented, however, Lenin’s Marxist policies created a dearth of resources and a general sentiment of discontent among the people.

Let us make an abrupt jump to America, 1981, where charismatic, pro-business Republican Ronald Reagan has just been elected president. Reagan introduces new, laissez-faire economic policies known collectively as “Reaganomics”, which take root in Rand’s classic conservatism. If implemented properly, they should result in industrial growth, efficient spending, and smaller government.

Yet, in practice, these policies slowed growth, accrued the largest national debt the country had ever seen, and significantly increased taxes on all but the richest Americans.

Of course, neither Lenin nor Reagan intended for their policies to harm their respective nations. So why did they? Because they were rooted in theory instead of fact.

When philosophers, economists or other respected figures devise theories on how society should work, they almost always fail to account for some hidden variable.

Marx, when creating his ideal society, didn’t account for human behavior. It never occurred to him that, when class mobilization ceases to exist, people lose their incentive to work.

Conversely, Reagan believed that business owners and CEOs would use their new tax breaks to create jobs; instead, they hoarded the capital themselves and widened the income gap to unprecedented levels.

Here is another seemingly unrelated example: I support capital punishment. If someone murdered a family member of mine, I would want to see the bastard fry. Wouldn’t you say the same?

If you answered yes, then great! Let’s vote in favor of the death penalty! But here’s the catch: you just voted for a policy that has killed at least 13 innocent people (and likely more, given the 138 death row inmates who have been exonerated since 1976), and cost California alone an estimated $4 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Herein lies the problem with arguing ideologies: ideologies can achieve what they set out to do, but the side effects can prove more detrimental than the problem itself.

Lenin’s policies did create an egalitarian society: they made everyone equally poor and miserable. Reaganomics successfully combated inflation and unemployment, but left the nation in a massive debt hole, vastly increased the concentration of wealth and disparity of income, and raised the poverty rate.

So how should you determine which ideology to believe in if you can’t base your opinion on general principle? Study history. Much of politics consists of hypotheticals: when we vote, we vote for the candidate whose policies we believe will benefit our country more.

Perhaps next time you vote, see if these policies have been tried in the past, and to what degree they experienced success.

Don’t discount a seemingly illogical policy that hasn’t been tried before. Keynesian economics brought the country out of the Great Depression and resulted in prosperity, despite initial criticism from pundits that its fundamental logic was flawed. They quickly rescinded their comments when they realized that what failed in theory succeeded in the real world.

Keynesianism soon became a staple of modern economic thought, proving the critics wrong. Its success forced academics to rethink their fundamental beliefs on how the world worked. In order to make progress, they needed to have their tenets destroyed to pave the way for new ideas.

This is how society becomes more efficient: when a historically accepted idea begins to fail, we must scrap it for a new, often untried one. Either this idea fails miserably and politicians learn never to implement such stupid legislation again, or the idea enjoys success and we have a new standard of thought.

Without trying and failing, progress is impossible, and even the most resounding successes leave room for improvement.

 

If you want to accuse ZACH MOORE of being brainwashed by the filthy liberal media, email him at zcmoore@ucdavis.edu.

UC Davis Men’s Soccer Preview

Sports Editor
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Teams: UC Davis vs. UC Irvine; vs. Cal State Northridge

Records: Aggies, 4-4-1 (0-0); Anteaters, 5-2-2 (0-0); Matadors, 8-1-0 (0-0)

Where: Aggie Soccer Field — Davis, Calif.

When: Friday, Oct. 4 at 4 p.m.;  Sunday, Oct. 6, at 3 p.m.

Who to Watch:

Although the season and school year have only just begun, several players have already established themselves as threats on the pitch. Leading the team in goals, junior forward Matt Sheldon has scored three goals in the first 10 games of the season, two of which have been game-winners. Sheldon’s three goals is half of the Aggies’ six goals this season.

Another stand out player is senior captain and midfielder Alex Aguiar, who has racked up 23 shots on goal, the highest number of shots by any Aggie so far this season. It also places him third in the Big West.  Hopes are that his continued attacks on goal will eventually begin to land in the back of the net.

“Staying focused and continuing to have the confidence to take shots on goal are key,” Aguiar said.

The upcoming games against the Anteaters and Matadors will be an excellent opportunity for Aguiar to capitalize on his propensity to shoot.

Senior goalkeeper Omar Zeenni has been a rock in the defense this season. A seasoned veteran, he ranks No. 9 all-time in the Big West, with a 1.00 career goals against average. Currently this season Zeenni has 27 saves, and a goals against average of 0.87. He will need to come up big against the tough opponents this weekend.

Preview:

The excitement of another school year can only be increased by one thing: the start of fall sports for the UC Davis community. The cool breezes of fall and changing leaves can only indicate one thing for the players on the UC Davis men’s soccer team: a whole new opportunity to dominate out on the pitch.

After ending the 2012 season with a solid 10-7-4 record and 7-3-0 in conference play, the Aggies hope to improve on an already strong 2012 season. Unlike many students who have only recently returned to Davis, the men’s soccer team already have 10 games under their belt.

The Aggies started off slow, with their opening game against Chico State on Aug. 25 ending in a tie and the next two away games versus Portland and Oregon State ending in losses.

“We’ve been in some tough battles this season, been on the wrong end of some of these results,” said coach Dwayne Shaffer. “I kept telling the guys to continue working hard because things will eventually turn our way.”

As the team begins to pick up steam this season, Coach Shaffer’s confidence in the Aggies’ abilities is beginning to be warranted. With wins against Seattle University, Saint Mary’s, University of San Francisco and most recently a huge 2-1 victory over No. 19 ranked New Mexico, the Aggies hold a respectable record of 4-4-1.

A sweep of this weekend’s opponents would not only establish a winning streak but give UC Davis a 2-0 record in conference play, placing the Aggies at the top of the Big West Conference.  However, sweeping this weekend’s opponents will not be an easy feat.

“We play an extremely difficult schedule in one of the highest-rated conferences in the country,” coach Shaffer said. “It’s not going to get any easier for us when we return home, hopefully our non-conference schedule has prepared us for another Big West run.”

Not only is coach Shaffer confident in the team’s abilities but the players are up for the challenging schedule they face this fall as well. Senior midfielder Alex Henry feels good about where the team is at so far this season.

“Confidence levels are pretty high, especially coming off the win against Mexico,” Henry said. “The back line has been strong and we’re starting to get our offense going.”

Henry went on to emphasize what the team will need to do this weekend to get two wins over Irvine and Northridge.

“Playing well together as a team; sticking to both sides of the ball; staying focused and sticking to our game plan,” Henry said. “If we do those things I think we’ll come off the weekend with a couple victories.”

– Sloan Boettcher

Guest Column: The assembly line university

Opinion
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The first, ancient universities were tiny; a handful of students lived with their teacher, who was a great sage. The teacher carefully chose students for their potential and taught not only facts but philosophy (“love of wisdom”). Many students of these sages became sages themselves or political leaders.

Today’s universities have drifted far from their roots at Plato’s Academy. Universities today have thousands of students, hundreds of professors, and a large administrative staff. Most Americans now go or want to go to a university; a university education is no longer unique.

Teachers no longer handpick students; premade algorithms now choose students. To accommodate thousands of students, universities became factories.

Just as an industrialist measures a factory by its output, many states measure their universities by the number of students enrolled and the number of degrees conferred.  The more students enrolled, the more degrees conferred, the more funding the state gives. The more funded the university, the bigger and “better” it is. A bigger university produces more graduates, which earns more funding, which grows the university. It is an endless cycle.

The more graduates like me built on the assembly line, the less attention the university can give to me as an individual. To the university, I am not an individual, only a unit of production. I am not unique, I am one of many.

When my university has thousands of students, personalizing my student experience is next to impossible. The university sees me as a student ID number, not a person. We students travel along pre-made major paths to a degree many have earned before us and many will earn after us. The option to “create your own major” already exists at many universities, but is not mentioned to students beyond a short reference in the general catalog, much less encouraged. When we create our own majors, we become unique, not one of many.

As a student, mechanized classes give me little opportunity to become independent or go above and beyond. They teach me as if programming a computer: facts to memorize, definitions to know, scantrons to fill in. Most classes enter data into me as if entering data into a spreadsheet. My task in most classes is memorizing, not understanding.

A computer can only memorize data; it cannot understand the data’s meaning or connections to other fields of study.  A computer outperforms any human at storing data without loss or error; most classes merely train me to be a poor version of a computer. I desire novelty, change and uniqueness; not endless, mindless, monotonous repetition of formulaic actions.

I am rarely encouraged to be curious, to discover on my own, or to devise my own way to learn. I am to learn following a one-size-fits-all model, to do laboratory procedures as a trained monkey following instructions, instead of as an experimenter.

I am not unique; I am one of many.

Mechanized education produces nearly identical and interchangeable people, not wise leaders and philosophers. Mass-produced goods are cheap and easily replaceable, just as mass-produced employees are. When it breaks, find another one. Don’t spend time trying to repair it; it is one of many. Just hire a new one.

Mass-produced goods have no spirit, no personalization and no uniqueness. The rare wise leaders and philosophers cannot be replaced — they are unique, not one of many. Mass production began with the noble desire to open university education to all, but resulted in mechanization: the only way to “educate” thousands of students at once.

William Conner is a fourth-year biochemistry major. He can be reached at wrconner@ucdavis.edu.

Pregnant mothers’ immune systems contribute to autism in children

Science Editor
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Autism and schizophrenia diagnoses are at an ultimate peak. Fortunately, a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and conducted within the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and Department of Neurology offers groundbreaking research about these neurodevelopmental disorders. Lead author of the study Kimberley McAllister, a professor and a researcher at the UC Davis MIND Institute, suggests that the risk of having a child with autism or schizophrenia might be higher if a pregnant mother contracts a viral infection.

The study is the first of its kind to help scientists understand how maternal immune activation affects a newborn’s neuronal and synaptic development.

“Our research indicates that immune molecules on neurons in the developing brain, control the formation of connections, and that process can be altered by a peripheral immune response during gestation,” McAllister said in an email.

The study focused on MCHI molecules — immune molecules found in the brain. McAllister and her team injected pregnant mice and rats with poly(I:C), a double-stranded RNA synthetic which mocks a real viral infection and tricks the immune system of the rodents. Thus, it activates their system without actually infecting the animals.

Myka Estes, a fifth-year graduate student in McAllister’s lab, gave the following comment regarding her interest in this field of research.

“I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and experienced cognitive complications from the disease,” she said. “This experience piqued my interest in how maladies of the immune system can affect brain function.”

The team used two test groups of rodents. In one group, the animals’ immune system was activated, and in the other, it was not. The newborns of the animals who were treated with the poly(I:C) viral infection showed greater levels of the MHCI molecules found in the brain. Similarly, in the group whose immune systems remained inactive, the levels of immune molecules did not show significant changes. Such a method helped the researchers report for the very first time that high levels of MHCI impairs neuronal ability from the newborns’ brains to form synapses — chemical signals that pass between nerve cells. The team was also able to identify the first molecular pathway of MHCI molecules, which aids in synaptic regulation.

Though contracting a viral infection while pregnant is a risk factor for having a child with autism, it still is only a risk — and not a guarantee — that a child will develop autism. According to Judy Van De Water, a professor and director of the UC Davis Center for Children’s Environmental Health, a subset of the population is likely to have an increased risk of developing autism.

“Boys are at an increased risk over girls, and siblings of an affected child are at increased risk by 20 percent,” said Van De Water.

With the flu season coming up, pregnant mothers all around are warned to be cautious. As far as the study is concerned, the results are promising, yet it is only the first step in improving interventions for developmental disorders.

Research isn’t the only way in improving the lives of children with autism and their families. Kirkland Washington III, a behavioral therapist at Capitol Autism Services and a 2012 UC Davis graduate, shares his experience with working with children with autism.

“Patience is extremely essential and an understanding that who you are working with won’t necessarily understand what you’re asking of them or be able to communicate their wants or needs at the time,” he said.

With the help of research and altruistic people combined, there seems to be hope to make these disorders less prevalent.

 

JASBIR KAUR can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Jiu-jitsu balances workplace stress

Features Editor
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UC Davis alumnus Ryan Danz is set to publish a law book about martial arts called Jiu Jitsu Jurisprudence.

Danz graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in managerial economics and has spent the last 13 years making a name for himself nationwide. He’s competed on “The Apprentice” and the 2012 season of “The Amazing Race”. When not on TV, Danz spends his time studying law and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a martial art primarily focused on grappling and ground fighting.

The book will be published by Jonathan Malysiak of ABA Publishing, the book publishing division of the American Bar Association, which typically publishes legal material.

“I was approached by the publisher after I was on the Amazing Race,” Danz said. “They saw my background in law and in jiu-jitsu.”

According to Malysiak, ABA typically publishes books of a very different nature.

“[Jiu Jitsu Jurisprudence] touches on lawyers and the life of a lawyer but it doesn’t talk about law,” Malysiak said. “It doesn’t talk about statutes or anything like that, like so many of our other books do, it’s just much more of a holistic, very very personally driven narrative.”

Malysiak believes this could be a major stepping stone for ABA publishing as it will branch out to a completely new potential audience.

“I think with Ryan’s book we’re showing a slightly more personal side, that hopefully will attract people to our books who possibly might have never known we existed or that we published books,” Malysiak said.

At the moment, that personal side belongs to Danz. Despite his history in law, he points out that his book is written with much more than lawyers in mind.

“When I say it’s a book for lawyers, it’s really for professionals, it’s really for people, anyone that goes to an office and sits and works at a desk every day,” Danz said. “It’s not really a question of ‘are you a lawyer or not?’ It’s ‘do you work and have stress in the workplace?’”

Danz’s book will focus more on life than law. He stresses jiu-jitsu as a way to cope with his life inside and outside the office.

“They reached out to people that had an audience or platform and asked if they’d be interested in writing a book on whatever it is they’d done to sort of balance their law life with their normal life, and for me that was jiu-jitsu,” Danz said.

The book may be a unique departure in content and style from typical books published by ABA, but its focus on jiu-jitsu was sought by the publisher, and Malysiak is assured that the message will not be lost on the public.

“There seem to be quite a few attorneys these days who are turning to Brazilian jiu-jitsu specifically, but also to other forms of martial arts and other types of meditation to help them both in the law practices but also in their personal lives, their family, their friends,” said Malysiak, who speaks with many attorneys as part of his role in the ABA.

Friendship in particular turns out to be an important aspect of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and part of what keeps Danz active in the sport.

“One of the things I talk about in the book that’s powerful in jiu-jitsu is the camaraderie,” Danz said. “In addition to learning the sport and being taught, the guys create a very powerful environment for people to develop friendships.”

Reading and working with Danz on the book, along with speaking to other lawyers who share Ryan’s interest in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Malysiak has learned how jiu-jitsu and the friendships made in the sport translate to a mechanism for coping with work and life stresses.

“There’s just something about the atmosphere, the whole camaraderie that a lot of people who participate in Brazilian jiu-jitsu experience with their sparring partners on the mat that has a lot of positive benefits, both personally and professionally,” Malysiak said. “It’s kind of a release, I guess.”

Camaraderie may be an important channel for the potential benefits of jiu-jitsu, but Danz’s jiu-jitsu instructor, Rafael Ramos believes the benefits are at the individual level.

“By practicing jiu-jitsu one can gain discipline, lose weight, improve flexibility and, most importantly, confidence,” Ramos said.

Confidence turned out to be essential to the completion of Danz’s book. With his large social media following, writing and being read was nothing unusual to him, but writing a book was a whole new challenge.

“The way of the world now, especially with social media, everything seems to be so condensed,” Danz said. “So I was always fine with kind of sharing things on my blog or in a blog format or 140 characters and making that the extent of my writing.”

His passion for practicing jiu-jitsu and his hard work at writing culminated in a 200-page learning experience.

“I never thought my writing was good enough to write a book and I never thought there’d be an opportunity to write a book, but that obviously wasn’t the case,” Danz said. “I looked back on it and I’m glad I did it. I’m excited for the book to release, but it takes a lot out of you.”

Danz has UC Davis to thank for his ability to write the book. Despite being a managerial economics major, he maintains that one of his best classes was an English class.

“I really developed my writing there … it finally did come in handy and I wish I would have taken more English classes,” Danz said.

Danz has always been in the business of learning: starting a business, traveling the world, practicing jiu-jitsu, writing a book; all in the interest of new experiences.

“I think his biggest quality is that he doesn’t have a big ego,” Ramos said. “He doesn’t care if today he didn’t ‘win’ every sparring session that he participated in as long as he learned something that will help him on the next session.”

 

NICK FREDERICI can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

 

Column: Tune in

Arts Editor
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Welcome to MUSE’s newest column. From the title, I’m sure you can deduce that it will primarily discuss music. What kind, you ask? Well, good sir or madam, I will tell you what kind: ALL KINDS. I love talking about music, and this column will act as a relay mechanism for my personal opinions about it.

I will discuss what is getting played at parties around campus, what people are listening to, what bands and songs I think are weird, which ones I like — pretty much anything you can think of.

I’m going to start off by simply stating that I don’t enjoy a lot of mainstream music: I tend to gravitate away from “swag”-focused music and toward music from the heart. I enjoy music in which the artist actually has evident emotions.

Although I’m not the biggest fan, I feel that there IS evident emotion in Country music. Yes, classical Country (like Johnny Cash) and soft, slow Country (like the song “She’s Everything” By Brad Paisley) contain emotion, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about right now.

I’m talking about the Country music that mothers, daughters and many men alike, all adore. The stuff you hear at day parties and rodeos. I know a bunch of people out there love Country, and I know a ton of people hate it. Personally, I don’t hate Country. I am by no means a fanatic (I cannot tell apart or even name two songs by Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton or Keith Urban), but if a Country song comes on, I won’t be one of the people who instantly stands up and screams angrily “What the hell? Who put this on?!”

I find Country to be soothing and relaxing, which is a feeling I think I share with almost all other Country fans. Most Country songs I hear are about romance and about having a good time — these are things that I’m sure the Country artists are passionate about, and things that are also easy to relate to.

Country music is easy on the ear, it keeps the energy up, and it rarely gets too heavy. It’s simple — Country artists rarely try too hard or overcomplicate their songs. I suppose this all is what makes Country music so desirable for parties — especially day parties it seems.

Although there is obviously emotion present in Country songs, all songs within the genre (regardless of the artist) sound the same to me. Maybe I just haven’t developed my Country palate enough yet, but every male Country singer’s voice has the same deep, wholesome, manly, “twangy,” sexy tone.

In addition to my vocal peeves, the guitar featured in Country music seems to be very limited in terms of sound variety. It seems to either be a simple, constantly repeated acoustic strumming pattern (like in “The Good Stuff” by Kenny Chesney) or a rough, loud electric guitar riff paired with heavy rock style drums (like Tim McGraw’s “Truck Yeah”).

This lack of variety is totally understandable — I get it, there is only so much an artist can do within a given genre. And people like these riffs and this party style of country, so why not keep making the music?

A sidenote about Country music (that I noticed while writing this article) is that almost 100% of country album cover artwork features the singer, in the outdoors, often on a field, wearing a cowboy hat, staring at the camera. It gets old really fast.

To all you stubborn Country fans, you might like a band called Drive-By Truckers. They have Southern accents, they utilize heavy rock guitar (like in the song: “Highway 72”), but there is an alternative and very unique sound and feel to their style.

Their songs are genuine, from the heart (great examples include: “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” and “Outfit”), and just sound freakin’ good. They have a great pair of guitarists who make use of the slide (“Late For Church”) which designs a cool, “warpy” guitar sound.

They have a ton of upbeat stuff that I could easily imagine hearing at parties. Their themes are sometimes similar to that of mainstream country and sometimes different, but as a band “Drive-By Truckers” are easy to relate to, moreso than the more popular country artists.

Yes, there are some Country bands that even I can enjoy listening to. And even though Country music is not my cup of tea, I still believe there are redeeming qualities to it, just as there are in Polka, Disco or Jazz. In this column, I will delve into what those are, even if it pains me to do so.

 

TYLER WEBB will be bumping the coolest tunes in his crib incessantly. To find out what he’s listening to, contact him at arts@theaggie.org.

Davis Farmers Market continues to grow, give back

Features Editor
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The Davis Farmers Market began with only three farmers in 1976, and has since grown to attract around 7,000 shoppers every Saturday.

Yolo County is known as one of the nation’s greatest agricultural powerhouses, and the Farmers Market, open Wednesdays and Saturdays year-round, is a place for consumers to connect with their farmers in a way they might otherwise not experience.

“[The farmers] are like artists who aren’t appreciated until they’re gone,” said Jake Clemens, a longtime market patron. “[The interaction] makes them feel appreciated for their hard work.”

The Davis Farmers Market has been a key community center in the City of Davis since its founding, especially after a covered structure was built to accommodate the market year-round in 1993.

“We come to the market even when we don’t need anything,” Clemens said. “It’s the pulse of the community. If there’s a problem in the city, this is where people come to talk about it.”

Students are also encouraged to stop by. In fact, the market’s hours were even extended until 1 p.m. on Saturdays to improve its accessibility to students, according to Randii MacNear, the manager of the Davis Farmers Market.

They can also visit the market at the UC Davis Silo on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. during Fall and Spring Quarters.

“Students have told me that it’s hard to feel at home at UC Davis, but we try to make the market feel like home in a friendly community,” Macnear said.

As students may not often buy food in bulk, the market is an ideal place to find produce.

According to Clemens, shoppers can buy single items, like one apple or one peach, and those purchases, however small, can benefit the community.

Supporting the growers of the Davis Farmers Market also lends aid to many lower income citizens of the City of Davis. Many growers from Davis provide food to the Food Bank of Yolo County, which is then distributed to people and families in need in the community.

Even though the City of Davis and Yolo County are considered to be part of the breadbasket of the nation, 17.5 percent of people in Yolo County are considered to be food insecure — which means that they don’t have enough food to eat on a daily basis, according to the Feeding America “Map the Hunger Gap” map.

Some of the food that is donated by farmers is sent to five Davis elementary schools. This donation provides free and reduced priced meals for students who are living below the poverty line.

In this way, supporting the growers at the Davis Farmers Market also supports the health of all of the citizens of Yolo County.

“[The Farmers Market] is a gem for the entire community,” Saylor said.

Seventy percent of the goods at the Farmers Market are produced less than one hour away, according to the Davis Farmers Market website, and there are many benefits to shopping locally.

Buying food directly from its producers allows you to interact with the farmers. You can chat with farmers about how the food was grown or made, and ask for suggestions about the best way to prepare it.

“The market is creating a relationship between the growers and consumers,” said Don Saylor, the district two Yolo County supervisor.

Growers love seeing customers enjoy the literal ‘fruit’ of their labor. Farming is not for the faint of heart, and it is often difficult for local farmers to maintain a market segment in competition with large factory farms.

The Davis Farmers Market is open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday mornings year-round in Central Park on Fourth and C streets, as well as on Wednesday nights. From March 20 through Oct. 30, the market is open from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m., and from Oct. 31 through March 13, the market is open from 2 to 6 p.m, also in Central Park.

 

TAYLOR CUNNINGHAM can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

News in Brief: Portion of Dairy Road to be painted for higher visibility

Campus Editor
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The roadway leading north from Hutchinson on the former West Entry Parking Structure of the Pavilion will be painted with green paint, transforming it into the first green bike lane in Davis created for the purposes of enhancing visibility.

The decision to create the green bike lane occurred approximately a year ago during a campus Bicycle Committee meeting, according to Bicycle Program Coordinator of Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS), David Takemoto-Weerts.

“The portion of roadway that heads north from Hutchison Drive on the west side of the Pavilion Parking Structure and includes the turns entering and exiting the parking structure have been a source of confusion for some cyclists and motorists, neither of whom understand what lane position they should take when on this short stretch of roadway,” Takemoto-Weerts said in an email.

“I think the green path is wonderful. It provides a highly visible signal to bicyclists and automobile drivers. It shows and leads bicycles to where they should be riding,” said John F. Hess, a member of the Board of Directors for the Davis Bike Club.

Green paint is utilized either as extensions of bicycle lanes or inside them to increase awareness of bicyclist to motorists, thus deeming them a traffic control device according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“The edges of standard bike lanes are delineated with white lines. Green bike lanes fill in all or some of the space between the white lines with green paint. The purpose of the green bike lanes is to improve circulation and safety for bicyclists and drivers. North of Hutchison Drive, the green bike lanes will position bicyclists in the center of Dairy Road,” said Charles Alexander, who is the project engineer who designed the green bike lanes and a member of Charles Alexander of Fehr and Peers, a transportation consulting firm.

According to Takemoto-Weerts, the construction of the green bike lane is expected to be complete within the next few weeks and available for use once the green paint dries.

 

– Liliana Nava Ochoa

 

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