Thursday, August 24, 2006

24 (minutes)

It's 11:32 a.m. at Irvine Valley College...

What's this? For the first time in the twenty-seven year history of the college, students are actually using the A-quad!


Nobody notices.

...Meanwhile, over by the new (and unfinished) CEC portables, Dissent's crack investigative team is on the job...

CHUNK: "Look! Behind the new temporaries! It's a construction truck!"

REBEL GIRL: "It doesn't look like a construction truck. I mean, it's unmarked. This looks more like one of those, um, one of those--alien vans."

CHUNK: "You mean like in Men in Black or the X-Files? "

REBEL GIRL: "Yeah, exactly!"

...CHUNK & REB SKULK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CEC BUILDINGS...

REB: (in a whisper:) "Hush! Get behind this bush! Do you see those two workers? I bet they're trying to fix the electricity for the portables!...Let's listen!"
1st WORKER: "Did you bring the wire thingy?"

2nd WORKER: "The wire thingy? I thought you brought it? Which wire thingy?"

1st WORKER: "Pendejo!"

2nd WORKER: "Do you hear buzzing? I hear buzzing. Don't you hear that buzzing?"

...SECONDS LATER...

CHUNK: "Look! The fence is sorta open! Let's go check out these new CEC shitboxes!"

REB: "No. We'll get in trouble!"

CHUNK: "How are we gonna get in trouble?"

Chunk walks through the opening in the chain-link fence and over to one of the rooms. Meanwhile, Reb, former Girl Scout, walks toward the parking lot and loiters nervously by a tree that is inexplicably wrapped in yellow security tape and accompanied by an empty plastic box.

She hears buzzing. It's coming from the roof of A300. She looks up at it.

Bees. Zillions of 'em.

Chunk checks out two of the new (and electricity-less) CEC rooms. He takes some snaps:



Suddenly, a shriek is heard from the nearby Humanities Center. Chunk and Reb run inside. They find a woman holding a picture and screaming at a student. "Like this! Like this!", she yells.


REB: "It's a writing conference. Let's leave 'em alone."

Reb and Chunk wander back out to the chain-link fence surrounding the new temporaries. They inspect a sign that they find there:


CHUNK: "This is the list of classes that had to be moved to other rooms this week. Have you noticed that most of the faculty on this list are in the School of Humanities & Languages or are otherwise on Raghu's Shit List?"

REB: "Well, duh."

Just then, the stink of formaldehyde wafts over the area (from A400, no doubt), causing a swift contagion of unattractive nose-scrunching and grimacing.

...Meanwhile, inside IVC's Student Services Building, underneath the "International Flag-o-Rama"...

Students stand in line, unaware that, if certain trustees have their way, the flags of Guatamala and Bosnia will soon house tiny security cameras that will secretly chronicle their every twitch and grumble.


...And over in the A200 Building...

A young woman suddenly starts vomiting violently. An instructor runs around for help. She finds two faculty with cell phones. They think.

They don't know who to call.

"Food poisoning, probably," says one instructor.

"Yeah," says the other. "Probably."

11:56 a.m.

“It’s just awfully coincidental”

In this morning’s New York Times:

Evolution major vanishes from approved federal list

Some excerpts:
Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. “There is no explanation for it being left off the list,” Ms. McLane said. “It has always been an eligible major.”

Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.

If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.…

That the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution.

One of them, Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned about it from someone at the Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter….

Dr. Krauss said the omission would be “of great concern” if evolutionary biology had been singled out for removal, or if the change had been made without consulting with experts on biology….

Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. “It’s just awfully coincidental,” said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University….

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...