Equity Arcata’s Home Away From Home Potluck is an event that happens four times a year. There are two during the spring semester and two during the fall semester. The purpose is to bring together all students, community members and local businesses and make them feel welcome within the community while enjoying a free meal.
Parking on campus sucks. And I’m not the only one that thinks so.
I try my best to walk or take the bus whenever I can. Sometimes I’m just too slow in the morning and have to drive to avoid being late. The problem is that between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. it’s ridiculously hard to find an open parking spot on campus.
Usually I end up parking on a residential street nearby. To put that into perspective, my apartment is a 21-minute walk from campus according to Google Maps. From where I usually end up parking, it’s an 11-minute walk to get to class. When I add the four minutes it takes to drive there, I only end up getting to class six minutes faster. Sometimes, that’s exactly what I need to make it to class on time.
“If people have to pay even more for parking permits there HAVE TO BE SPOTS AVAILABLE FOR THEM TO PARK IN.”
Parking Survey Response
A 2018 study by Walker Consultants included an anonymous survey on the state of parking on campus. The full results of this study are available, and boy, a lot of people were mad about parking.
“Prices as they are, are already ridiculous. One should not have to pay $315 a year to only find parking between 7:00-8:00 a.m and after 5:00 p.m.,” one person wrote.
The survey had multiple respondents to the parking issue.
“If people have to pay even more for parking permits there HAVE TO BE SPOTS AVAILABLE FOR THEM TO PARK IN,” another person wrote.
In addition to the sentiments behind these two comments, a large number of the comments suggested building both on-campus parking structures and off-campus parking with shuttles to campus.
One question on the survey struck a nerve with many respondents when it suggested the cost of parking passes may have to be raised in order to meet the demand. Many of the answers to this question were filled with colorful language.
“What in the world do you do with all the money that you are unable to sustain the program without raising prices again?” one of the less expletive-prone respondents wrote.
Another respondent offered to try and get the extra funds themselves.
“Perhaps we can lobby the state for funds? I’ll go to talk to Jerry on behalf of HSU. Dunno if he’ll see me, but I’ll go,” wrote the hopeful respondent.
Unfortunately, Jerry Brown is no longer our governor, so if this respondent had it in with Jerry Brown, that won’t work anymore. Even more unfortunate is that this is an issue that is going to take a lot of work from the school if it’s going to be fixed. It’s also likely that even if it is fixed, it’ll take longer than many of our students will be here. In the meantime, it’s still a great excuse for being late to class.
Humboldt State University announced Feb. 14 it was investigating flyers posted in campus bathrooms alleging a faculty member solicited paid sex from students.
The flyers showed a series of apparent phone messages between a student and a faculty member. In the messages, the faculty member asks the student for sexual contact in return for money.
The flyers also include a demand for faculty members using positions of power to exploit students to be outed and for HSU to hire more counselors of color.
(Warning: flyer contains potentially–triggering content.)
HSU confirmed on Feb. 18 it was investigating the allegations and had made progress beyond the flyers. HSU Spokesperson Grant Scott-Goforth said they could not share any further details.
“It’s under investigation and it’s a personnel issue, so there are a lot of privacy issues,” Scott-Goforth said in an email. Scott-Goforth also declined to tell the Times Standard if HSU has cancelled any classes.
Multiple anonymous student sources have confirmed to The Lumberjack that the classes of one faculty member have been cancelled and a substitute has taken over since the initial flyer investigation was announced. It’s not confirmed that these cancellations are tied to the investigation.
Title IX Coordinator David Hickcox also told the Times Standard the investigation has not been classified as a Title IX case, as no accusers have come forward.
HSU included multiple contacts for anyone with more information or for anyone who had been harmed, including the Campus Advocate Team, Counseling and Psychological Services, the Dean of Students Office, the Title IX Office and the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
In 2017, Humboldt State University commissioned a parking market demand study which found exactly what commuters knew—there is a problem with parking on campus.
HSU has a total of 2,162 spaces, about 1,000 of which are general parking. These spaces are shared among more than 9,000 students, staff, faculty, visitors and administrators. The study found solving the parking problem might be harder than adding more spaces. Terrain is challenging, space is limited and HSU has a finite budget.
Film student Alice Peterson had a panic attack the first time she had to park on campus.
“It was raining really hard, I was late to class, it was the second or third week, there were no spaces and there was a lot of over-stimulation,” Peterson said. “My fight or flight kind of kicked in and I left.”
Peterson has needed to drive to class more and more ever since. A load of heavy, expensive film equipment makes walking every day impossible. During her time at HSU, she has racked up almost $500 in parking violations because she is forced to park illegally or in spaces meant for visitors.
David Lieb is the national director of higher education mobility planning at Walker Consultants, the parking consultant firm that HSU contracted to conduct the market demand study. Lieb worked on the study personally and said that although universities are a group of people sharing a common parking problem, HSU faces some unique issues.
“You have a challenging topography,” Lieb said. “Everybody wants to park in a space that’s convenient to where they go, but there’s a limit to the number of spaces.”
There is barely any room on or near campus to add a significant amount of spaces, which is why many students are advocating for a parking structure. But Lieb did not recommend a structure.
“The shortage at this point is such that we don’t believe it would solve the problem,” Lieb said. “The survey suggested that there was more demand out there, but people were saying, ‘Why would I buy a permit if I’m not going to get a space?’ So if you increased the number of spaces, the people who are currently saying, ‘I’m not going to buy one,’ are going to buy one.”
This process means the parking situation would remain the same if a structure was built, but the parking prices would have to increase to pay for the construction.
“By what we calculated, parking prices would at least double or possibly triple,” Lieb said. “Our company provides design services for parking structures. We would be delighted to design a parking structure for you, but we’re not going to recommend it if we don’t think it’s the right solution.”
Alternative transportation and ride share programs are already available through HSU.
Jeanne Rynne, the associate vice president of Facilities Management, and Krista Paddock, HSU’s Parking and Commuter Services program coordinator, are working together to alleviate parking demand. All plans are in preliminary stages of development, but the long-term goal is to limit the number of cars that are brought to campus instead of adding more parking spaces.
“We are looking at potential park-and-ride lots in the area,” Paddock said.
There are parking lots in Eureka and McKinleyville that stand nearly empty during HSU’s busiest times. Those lots could be used as off-campus parking. HSU could then provide buses to and from the designated lots to limit the number of cars coming to campus daily.
“We’re always trying to promote ride share with the Zip Cars and the Zagster bikes and the Jack Pass program,” Rynne said.
Alternative transportation and ride share programs are already available through HSU. Both Paddock and Rynne said there are no concrete solutions on the table yet. For the time being, they plan on heavily marketing the programs that already exist.
“We’re always open to feedback,” Rynne said. “We have the Parking and Transportation Committee and there’s two student vacancies.”
Rynne, Paddock and Lieb all agree that parking is an incredibly emotional issue. Finding a space can take a long time. The study noted many commuters take longer to find a space than to travel to and from HSU, and HSU’s lots fill to 100% capacity during peak hours.
Parking is stressful in a special way. No one studying or working at HSU needs additional stress, but money and topography appear to be blocking all the solutions.
There is a new breed of bot accounts coming to Twitter, but these aren’t put there by Russia or the CIA or whoever else is trying to influence an election. They’re novelty accounts, posting large quantities of tweets that mimic the style of existing users.
Twitter user @kingdomakrillic runs one of these accounts. He asked to only be referenced by his Twitter account. His parody account, @dril_gpt2, sends out a new tweet in the style of @dril several times a day. @dril is a somewhat mysterious, absurdist comedy account that posts their jokes from behind the pseudo-anonymity of a profile image of an incredibly blurry Jack Nicholson. @kingdomakrillic explains their reasoning for choosing @dril to imitate.
“I wanted to do a GPT-2 bot of someone who was both famous and whose voice on Twitter was near-exclusively comedic,” he says. “If I did, say, a Trump bot, the only humor would come from the novelty of a bot generating Trump-like tweets.”
These imitation @dril tweets can be shockingly on-brand yet original at times. It’s not uncommon to see replies wondering if the tweets from the account are still created by a bot.
@kingdomakrillic assures me the tweets are bot-written but hand-selected.
“Curating the tweets is like DJing. I pace the content out, placing tweets I’m sure are funny next to ones I’m more uncertain about,” @kingdomakrillic says. “Sometimes I screw up. It’s a skill, not 1/10th of the skill that goes into actually writing tweets like dril’s, but it’s still something I need to improve on. There’s no excuse to post duds when you can output infinite text.”
That infinite text doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from GPT-2, a language model created by OpenAI, a research group with a focus on machine learning.
Sherrene Bogle is a computer science professor at HSU with experience using machine learning. Conceptually, teaching an algorithm how to do something is a lot like teaching a person. Bogle uses the example of teaching an algorithm to recognize whether a bird is in the foreground or the background of an image. First the algorithm is given a set of bird pictures that are already labeled as to whether the bird is in the foreground or background, allowing it to figure out the differences. Then it’s given unlabeled bird images, where it looks for those same differences. The difference between a human in a machine doing this task is that the machine doesn’t actually understand what it’s doing. The machine simply recognizes patterns.
Instead of looking for where birds are in pictures, GPT-2 looks for patterns in text. It’s job is to predict not just the next word, but the next couple paragraphs. GPT-2 is so good at this task that it can make paragraphs of human-readable text after being given only a handful of words. The output text can be about anything, but in order to generate text that mimics the style of a Twitter user, programmers need to retrain the model.
“The potential for harm is less than current human bad actors.”
Max woolf
@kingdomakrilic says he retrained GPT-2 on 9,500 tweets, totaling about 750 kilobytes. This focuses the original GPT-2 training data, consisting of almost 40 gigabytes of data, to accomplish a more simple task. The more simple a task, the better an AI can imitate it. Imitating tweets is simple, and with GPT-2’s vast capabilities, imitation yields good results.
There is also @kingdomakrilic’s curation, which gives many of his followers the impression that the AI is better than it really is.
Max Woolf is a data scientist at BuzzFeed, and the person responsible for making these twitter bots so easy to create. He built a tool, called GPT-2 Simple, to easily retrain GPT-2 with any new data—tweets—and wrote an accompanying tutorial. Some people think AI is a threat to humanity, but Woolf says otherwise.
“The potential for harm is less than current human bad actors,” Woolf says.
@kingdomakrilic agrees with this sentiment.
“Some people get freaked out at the fact that GPT-2 can produce sentences that have humanlike coherence, but are made with no meaning or intent on the bot’s part besides to imitate how humans write,” he says. “Markov chains, Madlibs, autocompletors, esquisite corpses—they’re also capable of creating coherent text with the illusion of intent. They’re just not mysterious black box programs like GPT-2.”
Craft beer breweries around Humboldt County are on the rise, offering a variety of flavors and experiences from their establishments.
Here is a brief rundown of the up-and-coming Humboldt Breweries:
Lost Coast Brewery – Throughout the state, Lost Coast Brewery’s products are on shelves or tapped into kegs at other breweries. Kinetic artist Duane Flatmo is the mastermind behind the unique designs on most of the Lost Coast beverage containers. Flatmo transformed one of his popular works of art, “The Great White,” into a statue which can be seen hanging out and greeting people at the main brewery in Eureka.
Six Rivers Brewery – Their slogan, “the brew with the view,” speaks volumes to the brewery that sits atop a hill overlooking farmlands and the ocean. Founded in 2008, Talia Machshon Clare and Meredith Maier are leading the operations in what is considered California’s second all-woman-owned brewery. You can catch them and their vibrant attitudes informing the public about their daily deals and upcoming events.
Mad River Brewery – Tucked away in scenic Blue Lake, Mad River Brewery welcomes all walks of life. On the weekends, the brewery is a popular spot and seating is packed. Parking is a challenge unless you’re a cyclist—many of whom cruise through the area. Mad River Brewery and Eel River Brewing Co. have unique outdoor corridors to enjoy beverages under the Humboldt sky.
Redwood Curtain Brewery – Redwood Curtain Brewery has two locations in Humboldt. Their first location resides in Arcata, and their second location opened up during the fall of 2018 in Myrtletown. Redwood Curtain has gained a reputation for providing new beverages weekly and challenging patrons to games of shuffleboard.
They may not have a kitchen, but they have partnered with LoCo Fish Co. to offer plenty of delicious options to pair with your beverage of choice. While their beverages are found only at brewery sites, anyone with a compatible glass growler can take a glass of Redwood Curtain home. They also press a 32-ounce can for convenient enjoyment.
Eel River Brewing Co. – Eel River Brewing Company throws upcoming beverage releases a week of dedicated events and specials. Located in Fortuna, this brewery was first to introduce Humboldt’s organic beer. During the summer of 2019, Arcata Main Street announced they would not allow the distribution of local craft beers for their annual Oyster Fest. Eel River Brewery partnered up with other Humboldt breweries and threw their own oyster festival. This not only gained support from the community, but drew such a massive crowd that the festival will be thrown again. Eel River Brewing Co. proves that servicing the community is a main priority for craft beer lovers.
At all of these breweries, charity events known as pints for nonprofits are a weekly occurrence that work with local organizations to raise money for their cause. Pub crawls are usually the talk of the town when it comes to bringing people together to raise money, and when it comes to pints for nonprofit you get to communicate directly with the organization.
Editor’s note: members of the editorial staff of The Lumberjack are part of and have been part of KRFH. The author of this article had no previous affiliation with KRFH.
The Humboldt State University student radio station KRFH is back with new and old DJs for the spring semester after dealing with flash floods and frequent power outages during the last semester.
Alejandro Zepeda was the station manager during the fall semester and is assistant station manager.
“It’s been a rough semester for sure,” Zepeda said. “I ended up taking over halfway through the semester as station manager and just kinda walked into a shit storm.”
KRFH is in the basement of Gist Hall, and when it flooded on Sept. 19, 2019, Zepeda said water started coming down from above.
“There was a couple spots where the water literally just came in through the ceiling,” Zepeda said.
Zoe Kelman, the manager for the live music program LIXX, said the lounge they use for recording ended up getting affected badly from the water.
“I’ve probably turned the station back on myself after power outages somewhere between six and 10 times at this point.”
Alejandro Zepeda
“The whole LIXX lounge got flooded and it smelled horrible,” Kelman said.
Kelman went on to say that pieces of the ceiling came down and the whole floor became dyed orange. Kelman also said it was lucky she came in before the event to set things up.
“I had actually gone in and already moved some of the equipment,” Kelman said. “It was already sitting on a table, so we got lucky that when the flooding happened none of our stuff was on the floor.”
Despite the salvaged equipment, the wiring in the KRFH studio runs in the ceiling. At first they couldn’t immediately tell if there was any direct damage to the wiring, but they ended up having to move the LIXX recording that day.
“We couldn’t do it in the LIXX lounge ’cause it smelled like a swamp, so we decided to do it in a different room,” Kelman said. “It was just like a whole thing where basically all of our equipment cut out at some point. We got dead air. Like, anything that could’ve gone wrong, went wrong.”
The frequent power outages were also an issue for the station.
“I’ve probably turned the station back on myself after power outages somewhere between six and 10 times at this point,” Zepeda said.
Zepeda said the power backup system was out of date so when the power went off, there was no leeway.
Zepeda said KHSU could hold a solution for the station.
“Within the year before they got gutted, they actually just upgraded all of their equipment and got a backup generator and a bunch of emergency supplies,” Zepeda said. “I remember thinking during the blackouts—having nothing to do at home—that I could’ve been on the air. I could’ve been talking. We could’ve been relaying news but instead we were all just sitting on our hands.”
“You can’t break this KRFH spirit.”
Eddie Rivera
Zepeda said if the station was given access to the abandoned KHSU studios, they could’ve taken it over and helped the community.
Last semester was Eddie Rivera’s first time as a DJ. Alongside the floods and power outages, he also described the station’s leadership struggles.
“Students are so busy and so overworked that sometimes you just can’t attend to everything that the club might need,” Rivera said.
He estimated that with class time and time spent on the air, students in the class will add an extra five hours of work to their week. Rivera said their manager struggles are a lot better now.
“We have a couple new managers and people who are taking a lot of initiative,” Rivera said. “The managers that we have are very dedicated to it and very positive.”
Rivera said the setbacks made the semester difficult for them, but they are still going.
“You can’t break this KRFH spirit,” Rivera said.
Popular demand for breakfast burritos has extended the serving time at The Depot by an hour. In previous semesters, breakfast burrito service stopped at 10 a.m. Now, it stops at 11 a.m. We asked The Depot’s staff and regular customers how the time extension affected them.
Aileen Dominguez works at the breakfast bar in The Depot, and worked there every day for the last semester. This semester, Dominguez has to close the breakfast bar and open the rice bowl station at the same time, alone.
“Overall it’s positive—the late students can get their burrito.”
Aileen Dominguez
“It is more hectic,” Dominguez said. “I have to be faster since there is only one person working the shift.”
Dominguez said opening and closing two stations at once is a challenge, as there’s no room for both to be done simultaneously.
Despite her challenges, Dominguez said she feels the extension has had a positive effect. For Dominguez, she noticed that students are able to get their burritos at a later time.
“Overall it’s positive—the late students can get their burrito,” Dominguez said.
Adriana Peck is a floor trainer, and oversees different zones at The Depot. This means she helps at the breakfast bar if needed. Peck agreed with Dominguez—she felt the time extension has had a positive impact.
“It is excellent. I am able to get off my shift and still grab a burrito,” Peck said. “It’s nice to know that it’s there.”
Leslie Rodriguez is a regular customer at The Depot. Rodriguez looks forward to eating breakfast burritos.
“It’s really good with Tapatio,” Rodriguez said.
However, Rodriguez didn’t feel like the time extension had much of an effect for her.
“It sucks,” Rodriguez said. “They’re all out by the time I get there.”
Dear Evergreen,
What do I do for my significant other on Valentine’s Day when I’m broke?
Dear Lootless Lover,
Valentine’s Day is this Friday and with that comes the societal expectation to shower your lover in materialistic gifts. But for those with limited funds, making an extravagant gesture isn’t always possible. There are many creative ways to express your love this Valentine’s Day that don’t involve spending loads of cash.
If you’re a wizard of words you can charm your valentine with a thoughtful card of appreciation. Words are free, so come up with a clever poem for your partner to make them feel special. Bust out your artistic talents and create some art from the heart. You can even doodle some cute cartoons inside a card for a more personal touch to a standard Valentine’s Day card.
With spring inching closer and closer, flowers have already started blossoming. Take a walk and gather some wildflowers and foliage to make a bouquet. Be careful not to pick any poisonous plants. You wouldn’t want to infect your valentine with anything other than love.
Baking a sweet treat for your sweetheart is sure to satisfy. Check your cupboards for basic baking ingredients and whip up something good. If you aren’t the best baker you can easily make chocolate-covered strawberries to set the mood.
Chances are you already have some type of streaming service, so put on some Netflix and chill with your valentine. Pop some popcorn and cozy up with your favorite movie or show. Light candles or incense for an extra touch. Soon enough you’ll be having consensual fun while Netflix asks if you’re still watching.
You can also try going out and sightseeing with your partner instead of a movie night. Go on a scenic walk or take a stroll with your lover somewhere beautiful. If you can swing it, try planning a picnic on the beach or in the redwoods to share some quality, heart-to-heart time together. There’s nothing more pure—and free—than talking with someone you care about.
Think outside the box this year. Whether you can afford it or not, there are plenty of thoughtful and creative ways to express your love.
xoxo
Sincerely,
Evergreen
If you have any questions you’d like to send in, email us at contactthejack@gmail.com. We won’t publish any names and you don’t need to use one.
In 1960, the Kennedys tried to steal the White House. A Kennedy ended up living in the White House, so they may have succeeded. Maybe they stole the election, maybe they didn’t. But because we have the physical ballots, no one can dispute that they tried. In the modern world of voting machines and election apps, we might never know who tries in the future.
If you wanted to rig an election in 1960, you needed a plan, a large team, a smokey basement in Chicago and a lot of money. You needed someone to go to a graveyard and register corpses to vote. You needed to catalog abandoned houses and figure out how many dead or fake people you could put in each one. You needed to physically go out and beat up a few voters—possibly even commit a murder or 20. You needed a large operation full of trusted members willing to do all of this. And perhaps most importantly, you needed to be fine with everyone knowing that you just tried to rig an election.
Stealing an election was incredibly difficult, dangerous, obvious and almost completely ineffective if one candidate had a significant lead. Voting with a paper ballot clearly isn’t a perfect system, but the attempted rigging of the 1960 election is almost common knowledge. We have the paper to prove it.
We know what paper is. We hold it in our hands almost every day. Casting a ballot is an anonymous and easily-understandable physical action. It’s traceable at every step of the way, and we can tell if the ballots don’t make it to their destination.
Conspiracy with physical ballots is possible, even probable, but not effective on a large scale. Certainly, physical ballots aren’t perfect, but they are hard to mess with in a way that will significantly affect an election. There are doubts that, even with all the tampering and violence, the attempted rigging of the 1960 election even changed the result.
Electronic voting, on the other hand, is vulnerable in ways paper voting is not. When you stand in front of a voting machine, there are some questions you probably have.
The most important part of getting people to vote is the trust that the vote goes somewhere. It’s counted. The vote is verifiable, and the process is easily understandable.
Who made the voting machine? Who paid for it? When you press a virtual button on a screen, how do you know the machine tallies it, or gives it to the right candidate? How do you know it reaches a database where it will be counted? Do you know what the software being used is, how it works, if it’s secure, how to tell if it has been tampered with, if the machine is connected to the internet — as many inexplicably are— or if it has been calibrated properly?
The odds are that you don’t. I don’t. Nobody does. Nobody besides the people who managed to remotely change a voting machine’s final tally. Nobody besides interested parties in our own system who might want the election to turn out a certain way. Voting machines are incredibly vulnerable. They are outdated upon release, not tested properly, easy to manipulate and often connected to the internet for some reason.
You don’t have to call on the crime syndicates of the country anymore. You don’t have to organize a massive conspiracy. All you need to rig an election is to know how to hack a virtually-undefended voting machine.
The most important part of getting people to vote is the trust that the vote goes somewhere. It’s counted. The vote is verifiable, and the process is easily understandable.
Electronic voting doesn’t just open our system up to attacks from malicious parties. It erodes the trust between the voter and the system. This would be true even if everything was perfect—even if there was no one meddling. But there is someone meddling. We know there is. There always has been and there always will be. It wasn’t just 1960 and it wasn’t just Democrats. The question isn’t, “Who would rig an election?” It’s, “Who wouldn’t rig an election?”
If someone’s going to attempt to rig the 2020 election in the same way as the 1960 election—and they possibly already have—I want them to have to work for it. I want them to have to go out to graveyards, get their hands dirty and threaten some grandmas. I was disappointed by the Iowa caucuses. These days it’s hard to tell the difference between epic, mind-blowing incompetence and election theft. If these elections are going to be a complete farce, ditch the apps and voting machines. If there’s going to be ballot burning, I want to see the flames.
Sudden oak death is the common name for a disease that started infecting trees 20 years ago and has since killed over a million trees—including trees in Humboldt County.
The University of California Cooperative Extension explained that the disease is caused by a pathogen called Phytophthora ramorum.
“It is caused by a microscopic fungus-like organism, Phytophthora ramorum, a lethal, canker-causing pathogen of certain oaks and tan oak trees,” UCCE wrote.
Susan Marshall, a wildland soils professor at Humboldt State University, is involved in two grant programs that deal with pathogens like sudden oak death. Marshall is connected to Christopher Lee, an HSU alumni with a Ph.D in forestry from the University of Missouri, who now works as a forest pathologist at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
“It gets into the vascular tissue that is just underneath the bark, and it kills that tissue,” Lee said. “If it does that in several different places around the circumference of the tree, then it will eventually kill a band of tissue all the way around.”
If the Phytophthora ramorum does kill the tissue all around the tree, the tree is effectively girdled. Generally, live tissue transports water and nutrients up the tree, but if those pathways are blocked lower down, everywhere above the infection dies. The organism infects the tree’s circulatory system and can spread to the nutrient tissue and water-conducting tissue, xylem and phloem, essentially starving the tree and clogging it up. A full ring is a sure death sentence.
“As far as these diseases go, it would probably be worse under a warmer and wetter sort of scenario.”
Christopher Lee
Marshall and Lee described Phytophthora ramorum as being like a fungi or brown algae, with characteristics similar to closely related plant pathogens. Specifically, they are in the class Oomycota, which are a distinct line of fungus-like eukaryotic microorganisms. They are fungus-like because they have a long, branching net-like structure like the hyphae of fungi. They are algae-like because they descend from the same phylum, Heterokontophyta, as many algae.
Phytophthora ramorum is not the only pathogen that affects trees, but it is the most visible and the most deadly, devastating thousands of acres of forest. In California, sudden oak death has been most prominent in and around Sonoma County, according to reporting by the Times Standard.
Humboldt County’s dense forests of tan oak, the main host for the disease, is at especially high risk of tree death. Humboldt’s weather and climate are an unfortunately-inviting environment for sudden oak death. The dense oak forests in the area means both greater humidity and a shorter distance for a pathogen to travel.
“As far as these diseases go, it would probably be worse under a warmer and wetter sort of scenario,” Lee said.
The recent fires around California also have an indirect connection to Phytophthoras. The loss of vegetation limits the way pathogens spread due to a wildly new arrangement. It is good to note heat from fire can sometimes help slow a pathogen’s spread by eradicating an area where the pathogen had a large presence. Lee noted that if the root system of a tree isn’t fully dead, however, Phytophthoras may have a chance of surviving in its host.
The main goals of the programs Marshall is involved with are to identify the disease more rapidly and figure out how to slow its spread.
There isn’t a specific way to control a disease like this, but Marshall said rapid testing of plants in nursery stock may catch Phytophthora ramorum before it can infect new hosts.
“Every year that [we] can buy that [sudden oak death] doesn’t leapfrog into some other county and cause quarantines and regulations on those counties is a little bit of economic damage that they’ve staved off,” Lee said.
Sudden oak death has only affected one percent of Humboldt’s trees, but its impacts in California and Oregon demand researchers like the ones Marshall and Lee are involved in will be continuing to study it and find newer and faster ways to help manage the remaining forests along the coast.
Humboldt State University celebrates Black Liberation Month, which promotes black excellence and achievement, every February.
People of color are often covered by the media for achievement in athletics and entertainment, but rarely for academia, volunteer work or simple successes unless they’re a trailblazer in their field. More often than not, Blacks face the most discrimination in media.
At HSU, Black Liberation month emphasizes the great achievements and progress in the Black community—but these often fall out of the public eye once February is over. This is a failure—the celebration of the Black community should extend through the year and into perpetuity. At The Lumberjack, we acknowledge the lack of representation blighting the mainstream media and our own newsroom. We strive to break the toxic cycle of misinformation and misinterpretation and promote the achievements of the Black community at HSU.
“Blacks represent 37 percent of criminals shown in the news, but constitute 26 percent of those arrested on criminal charges. In contrast, news media portray whites as criminals 28 percent of the time, when FBI crime reports show they make up 77 percent of crime suspects.”
Travis L. Dixon
Modern media organizations filter the truths of the world, a behavior that has a significant impact on their audience. The way we absorb news depends on the way it’s delivered. Emphasizing equity and integrity in the media February and beyond
The study, “A Dangerous Distortion of our Families,” by Travis L. Dixon, Ph.D from the University of Illinois, looked into media coverage from local and national media outlets and found they often warped the reality of Black families to fit the narrative of the big screen.
“Blacks represent 37 percent of criminals shown in the news, but constitute 26 percent of those arrested on criminal charges,” Dixon wrote. “In contrast, news media portray whites as criminals 28 percent of the time, when FBI crime reports show they make up 77 percent of crime suspects.”
The study, sponsored by The Washington Post, found that at best, media outlets promoted racially biased portrayals and myths that pathologize black families and idealize white families with respect to poverty and crime.
At worst, the study found that media outlets amplified those inaccurate depictions for political and financial gain. They said such reporting reinforces debunked narratives that justify police brutality or promote economic policies that hurt not just Black families, but all families.
Throughout February, throughout the year, into the next decade and into forever, we shall strive to accurately report on and represent the lives and achievements of the Black community at HSU. We commit ourselves to journalistic accuracy and integrity. We commit ourselves to the celebration of the liberation of our oppressed communities and we commit to support them on their path to self-realization.
Humboldt State’s men’s basketball home game on Feb. 8 was a challenging one for the team as they took a loss, 72-94, against California State University, San Bernardino.
The Jacks ended the night with a loss and an 8-15 record, but a few highlights kept the fans engaged.
In the first half, Jackson Strong made back-to-back three-pointers, while Zachariah Christian gave the Jacks an early 6-0 lead. The Coyotes caught up, bringing the score to 19-11 in the next nine minutes to take a 19-17 lead on a lay-up by Jordan Mitchell.
The Coyotes increased their lead to 24-17 with eight minutes left in the first half. Rob Lewis cut the Coyotes lead to 37-30 with four straight points. Coyote player Richard Laku hit a three, which left the score at 40-30 right before halftime. In the second half, the Coyotes led and eventually outscored the Jacks by 22 points, taking the win.
The Jacks had several players with double-digit points. Christian scored 18 points, while Isaiah Pope put up 16. Amari Green had 12 and Lewis scored 10. The Coyotes had 43 rebounds and the Jacks had 34.
Head coach Steve Kinder said it was a hard game, but he was happy with the good start to the game.
“What stood out to me the most was how good Cal State San Bernardino is,” Kinder said. “We just played a very good basketball team. We’re their 19th win—their last victim. They’re a very good basketball team and we competed with them well at the beginning of the game. I thought we did a nice job staying pace with them.”
There are nail biters in sports, and then there are blowouts. For the Humboldt State University women’s basketball team, Saturday was one of those blowouts where the Jacks found themselves on the right side of the scoresheet. Decked out in their black road uniforms for blackout night, the Jacks stormed their way to an early lead and never looked back as they took a convincing 107-62 win over the visiting San Bernardino Coyotes.
The Jacks were led in scoring by Alexia Thrower, who put up her eighth double-double of the season, putting up 26 points to go along with her 12 rebounds. Another standout performer for the Jacks was Sandin Kidder, who put up a double-double of her own with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Madeline Hatch and Gabrielle Carbajal also scored in the double digits along with Emily Packham, who had a career night with 11 points.
The Jacks established themselves quickly, finding reliable 3-point shots from up and down the roster. Hatch struck first from beyond the arc, setting the tone for the night as the senior guard went 5-12 on her 3-point shots. Carbajal put up three 3-point shots of her own while Kidder hit both of her two 3-point attempts.
Head Coach Michelle Bento-Jackson was very pleased with her team’s performance, pointing to the offense’s ability to keep driving the play with a lead.
“I know for the fans and everybody it just seems like 100 is the magic number. I don’t even know when we hit 100 tonight. I was just so focused on just making sure we were still doing what we needed to do.”
Michelle Bento-Jackson
“It’s great when the shots go in,” Bento-Jackson said. “But more importantly I really was focusing on the shot selection and making sure that we got good ball movement. Not just settling for an early shot against the zone.”
Even with such a scoring effort from her team, Bento-Jackson kept the team working hard through the full game.
“I know for the fans and everybody it just seems like 100 is the magic number,” Bento-Jackson said. “I don’t even know when we hit 100 tonight. I was just so focused on just making sure we were still doing what we needed to do.”
Carbajal was happy to see contributions from the whole team, saying that it made for a good experience out on the court.
“It was really nice being able to play with everyone,” Carbajal said. “And everyone contributing out there, and scoring and sharing the ball. It was just a great game.”
Carbajal was also confident that the team could use this game to push them forward going into their upcoming road trip to San Francisco and Sonoma.
“Just using this game as momentum and building confidence for the next game, especially San Francisco,” Carbajal said. “I know that we’ve been struggling on the road but just coming into this next game, we just have to have a different mindset.”
For the future, Bento-Jackson is focused on maintaining a high level of performance even when the team will play three out of their last four regular season games on the road as they aim for the California Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament in March.
“We have three games here on the road and this is going down the stretch,” Bento-Jackson said. “Playing with that same type of energy when we’re not in front of our own fans. And as we say, it requires a lot of mental toughness to go on the road and to get a victory. And that’s something that we need to do for these next two weeks.”
It’s about that time of year when empty seats and sniffles become a daily thing in class. Hopefully everybody is taking care of themselves during the winter, because the common cold or even the flu can creep up on you. I asked students and staff what home remedies and tips they use when they feel a cold coming.
Allan Jones is one of three candidates in the running for Humboldt State University’s next athletic director. While speaking to open forum attendees, Jones said investing in the community and working with the community members are some of the keys to making a successful athletics program.
“We’re going to be heavily involved in this community asking for support,” Jones said. “But in order to do that we need to be invested as well. Not just our student athletes, but our coaches, our administrators, our staff.”
Jones, originally from a small community in Conyers, Georgia, pointed to his additional work in the Waco, Texas area as an example of what he would hope to bring to HSU.
“There’s a reason why I’m on the Rotary Club of Waco,” Jones said. “Why I’m on the little league board for baseball and softball in Waco and why I’m on the Museum Association Board of Waco, and it’s because I need people to know that when I’m out in the community asking for their support, that there’s a return on that investment.”
“I want to bring those best-in-class practices and successes we’ve seen and measure those to scale here with Lumberjack athletics.”
Allan Jones
Jones comes to the table with 20 years of experience in college athletics, most recently working with the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in Waco as the president and CEO. Jones has also held positions at Arizona State University, University of North Texas, University of Louisville, University of Maryland and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Coming to HSU having held positions at several major universities, Jones was confident that his experience there and at smaller schools would help him improve the programs at HSU.
“I want to bring those best-in-class practices and successes we’ve seen and measure those to scale here with Lumberjack athletics,” Jones said. “So I think those experiences at the bigger schools and bigger institutions mesh with having been at places that were smaller, that were rural as well my background having grown up in the second smallest county in the state of Georgia.”
“Let’s figure out, is there a Band-Aid approach that gets us through this next three to four months? And then let’s have the best softball complex between San Francisco and Portland.”
Allan Jones
On the subject of HSU football, which was cut under the previous administration, Jones was open to having the conversation of a return in the future, but he stressed being able to support athletes as a whole.
“I’m comfortable having a conversation down the road about football,” Jones said. “But what it needs to be is a very open, honest, transparent discussion as someone who’s actually brought a sport to a full time NCAA status, understanding not just the scholarship cost, but recruiting, travel budget—all the other things that go in.”
In regard to existing programs on campus, one big facilities issue that Jones sees at HSU is the condition of the softball field, which often becomes unusable when it rains. He said the softball field would be at the top of his list of things to address if he is hired.
“As I understand, left field has got an issue four feet down that it won’t drain,” Jones said. “Well, why would we put $1 million into that when we’re going to have to go back four years later and build a brand new stadium? Let’s be strategic. Let’s figure out, is there a Band-Aid approach that gets us through this next three to four months? And then let’s have the best softball complex between San Francisco and Portland.”
The nominees for the 92nd Academy Awards were recently announced in the lead-up to the ceremony, which will take place Feb. 9. The nominees are, for the most part, very easily predictable to anyone who is familiar with the kind of films that tend to win Oscars or other similar awards. That isn’t in itself a bad thing, but it does raise the question of how relevant the Oscars really are, and if they really live up to their supposed purpose of granting the “highest honors in filmmaking” to the “best films of 2019.”
In recent years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been under its fair share of criticism for its notably conservative and traditional values. Indeed, the Academy does seem much more inclined to nominate and award reassuring, easily accessible films and blockbusters than they are to consider better, but less successful films.
A film has to play for at least one week in a theater in Los Angeles County, and its theatrical release has to be the first time that it’s shown.
Of course, as with all aspects of art, the quality of any film is subjective. But the choices made by the Academy, which is comprised of around 6,000 industry professionals, invite the questioning of their practices.
The criteria for a film to be considered by the Academy is extremely limiting. For starters, a film has to play for at least one week in a theater in Los Angeles County, and its theatrical release has to be the first time that it’s shown. It can’t be shown on television, released to DVD or Blu-ray or streamed before that.
Nominees like “Marriage Story” or “The Irishman” would have instantly been disqualified if they hadn’t been shown in theaters before being made available to stream on Netflix.
This might not sound like a major obstacle at first, but that’s mostly only true for American films with a wide release. Having a decent budget and big names attached doesn’t hurt a film’s chances either. Any independent or foreign film that can’t secure a release in one area of one country is instantly not considered, regardless of how good the reviews are.
This is just one of several of the Academy’s rules for eligibility, but it’s the most easily-understood example of how limiting the criteria is for one of the most prestigious awards a film can receive.
Even getting past the extensive list of rules, the Academy is known for usually nominating specific types of films. On this year’s list, only two of the nine Best Picture nominees, “Little Women” and “Parasite,” are not predominantly made by and starring white men, who have been the center of the majority of films that the Academy tends to nominate and award. This is a circumstance that has been the case due to both the criteria for Academy consideration and because the Academy’s board is comprised of, in large majority, white men—a point that is often made into memes with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.
“Little Women”, while receiving nominations for Best Picture, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Costume Design, did not receive any nominations for Best Director or Best Cinematography despite being an incredibly strong film in those categories. An article by Vulture explained how these rare films being nominated cause them to be, possibly unfairly, depended on to please all their demographics.
“I will say that Greta Gerwig and the film are put in the impossible position of having to represent all things to all women when she became the ‘presumptive representation of all-female directors,’” Angelica Jade Bastien said. “No film can shoulder such a burden.”
Defenders of the Academy—those who are perfectly content with the nominations—will claim that it’s simply a meritocracy—that the nominations truly represent the best films of each year with no barriers.
However, the numerous barriers, biased board and skewed representation severely limit which films are considered for one of the most widely recognized honors a film can receive. However, unintentionally, this influences how the film-going public decides what they want to watch and how they interpret what they watch.
Until the Academy gets some new blood into their board, stops immediately disqualifying films and more frequently overcomes the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, their choices will never fulfill their ostensible purpose.
Biology professor John Steele guided a cell biology lab his first year at HSU wherein he wanted to teach students that cells need nutrients to survive. After 48 hours, the lab discovered quite the opposite. James Gomez, a current student in the lab, had the opportunity to research more into the groundbreaking discovery.
“In science, you’re kinda looking for that unexpected stuff,” Gomez said. “Right after I came in, I was really excited to be a part of that. There was this thing that was happening that we particularly can’t fully explain, and I’m actually in the lab doing that science.”
Steele’s experiment for his class involved students starving the cells of nutrients to trigger a state of autophagy, which is when the cell starts to consume itself. Steele meant to emphasize that cells needed nutrients like amino acids and lipids to survive. It was assumed that starving cells of key nutrients eventually killed them.
Steele said the experiment was common, and was usually shut down after six to eight hours. Steele decided to run it for 48 hours instead, since that was the time between lab sections. When his class returned returned to the lab, rather than seeing a bunch of dead cells, they were decidedly more alive. The lab had made a discovery.
Despite the cells being in autophagy in Steele’s experiment, they had stopped dividing and took on a strange morphology. Their metabolic rate was high—they were very much not dead.
Now the lab, including Gomez, are deep in research. The lab is introducing pathway inhibitors, or drugs, to block basic cell functions, narrowing down the essential and non-essential. The project is open-ended, as students methodically look at every cellular pathway to determine the needs of cells.
“What I love about this project is that it was born here,” Steele said. “Nobody else that I know of is working on this, outside of HSU. That’s an awesome process to be a part of, where students get hands-on training in phenotypic genetic screening and drug screening, and we get to learn about the basic biology of cells in doing this.”
Steele encourages the students in his lab to explore the boundaries of their knowledge. CRISPR, Cas9 and stem cell cultures are unique tools available to these students, and they offer an opportunity to think outside the box and do creative science.
Steele’s lab combines bio-technologies using unique stem cell cultures and genome editing techniques. The lab cultures stem cells—cells which can grow into any cell type—and chops up DNA using CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-clipping tool, to learn how rare neurodegenerative diseases develop in the brain.
“There have been some really cool applications of CRISPR out there. And they’re just because somebody said, ‘I wonder if we could do that?’ and they did.”
John Steele
Steele’s graduate student Kyle Anthoney, on the other hand, is working on making a model of a rare disease called progressive supernucleogical palsy, which looks like a combination of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. The disease is a tauopathic disease because a main characteristic of the disease is a buildup of the tau protein, which blocks some necessary cell functions. To understand the finer details of the disease, Anthoney developed a new method for growing neurosphere cell types into what is, effectively, a miniature brain.
Scientifically named 3D neural sphere cultures, these miniature brains offer a platform for researchers to study three types of brain cells at the same time. Anthoney’s method allowed him to organically grow neurons, oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, three dominant cell types in the brain, from human stem cells, so they would develop naturally like they would in a growing brain.
Anthoney’s research is up for review in a number of scientific publications and his name is on some breakthrough scientific papers. He is contributing to research about progressive supernucleogical palsy and other tauopathic diseases. His research concentrates the tau protein in a miniature brain to simulate the symptoms of progressive supernucleogical palsy, and he is exploring how the protein and disease impact his lab-grown brain cells.
“There have been some really cool applications of CRISPR out there,” Steele said. “And they’re just because somebody said, ‘I wonder if we could do that?’ and they did.”
Humboldt State University’s Bicycle Learning Center made the transition in September 2018 from a student club to an Associated Students program umbrellaed under HSU’s Waste Reduction and Resource Awareness Program.
Steven Sperling volunteers at the BLC while pursuing his master’s in business administration.
“Bicycles are the most efficient form of transportation there is for human beings,” Sperling said. “Bicycles can and should save the world, period.”
Originally founded in 1992, HSU’s entirely student-staffed Bicycle Learning Center is a free resource available to all HSU students in need of bike repairs. The transition opened up two part-time instructor positions, paid for with student fees, that are currently split between three students.
“Probably the biggest thing that I’m working on here is how to share my bicycle knowledge efficiently,” Sperling said. “Learning how to teach is one of the things that I’m most excited about learning while I’m here.”
Current Director Julian Palmisano has been a member of the BLC since he transferred to HSU from Santa Barbara City College in 2017.
“We all started as volunteers at the shop to serve and build community, utilize the resources and gain experience,” Palmisano said.
The BLC does its best to provide all of the tools necessary for maintaining a well-conditioned bicycle, along with as many consumable parts that they can get their hands on. With a budget of only $800 provided by WRRAP, the majority of parts that cycle through the BLC are donations.
“Sometimes we just don’t have stuff and we have to tell people like, sorry we can’t help. Which is a real bummer.”
Colton trent
Colton Trent is an instructor entering his third semester volunteering for the BLC.
“The budget provides a buffer in case we run out of stuff,” Trent said. “But for the most part we can function pretty well trying to up-cycle and recycle things.”
As a result of their small budget, the BLC can only provide a finite number of students with bicycle maintenance.
“Sometimes we just don’t have stuff and we have to tell people like, sorry we can’t help,” Trent said. “Which is a real bummer.”
The BLC encourages donations in the form of tools, bicycle parts and old bikes that will be refurbished and donated to a student-rider in need. All cash donations that the BLC receives go directly into the shop’s spare parts fund.
In the fall semester of 2019, the BLC saw over 180 documented student visits, totaling over 100 hours of bicycle maintenance. By spreading the trend of using bicycles as a primary-method of transportation, the BLC is promoting a healthier lifestyle with a significantly smaller carbon footprint.
Located in the eastern tunnel by the Redwood Bowl, the BLC is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, with instructors and volunteers standing by to assist and educate students in bicycle repair.
There are five apps you should download this semester to help with organizing your school life and keeping your mind at ease. While not all of these apps are accessible on all types of phones, they’re typically compatible with phones that host Google Play or the Apple App Store.
1) Google Drive
The Google Drive app is one of the best apps you can use as a student. It hosts all of the accompanying Google Drive features like Google Sheets, Slides and Docs. You can download each app individually for more convenience, but thankfully they’re still accessible through the Drive.
2) Canvas
The Canvas app is helpful for doing assignments on the fly or for getting in touch with classmates for projects. Don’t turn off the notifications for this app because you could miss important class reminders from your professors. This app allows you to submit assignments from wherever you have a WiFi or data connection. It’s also compatible with Google Drive, which makes submitting assignments simple. You can check the to-do list to stay on top of your work and review the app calendar to see upcoming deadlines.
3) The Transit App
The Transit app is essential for any student who commutes to campus. This free app will save you time and stress by showing you local transit routes, schedules and live updates. A helpful feature on this app is the ability to locate the closest route from wherever you are, as long as your GPS is on and active. Not only does the app display bus routes, but it also shows rideshares in the area like Lyft.
4) Humboldt State Mobile:
The Humboldt State Mobile app is a useful tool for checking the school directory, campus life events and other school-related information. You can register or drop classes, check your student center and browse semester class schedules. There’s even a campus map with marked locations for print kiosks and dining services. Although the app can be glitchy, it’s still a valuable and free resource that the school offers.
5) Music streaming apps:
According to a report on the neuroscience of music published by the United States National Library of Medicine, several studies found that listening to music can be therapeutic and may provide stress relief and improvements to cognitive function. Throwing on a study playlist might help you decompress while you review material. Check out Spotify, Pandora or SoundCloud for free music streaming services. Premium versions for music apps are also available if you wish to upgrade your music accessibility. The next time you sit down to study, turn on some tunes to help your cognitive functioning.