Soon

Soka suckered?

• I hate it when this happens. In today’s OC Register: Ex-Soka finance chief accused of embezzlement:

.....ALISO VIEJO – The former finance director of Soka University of America has been indicted on charges he embezzled $1.7 million from the private university over seven years, according to a federal indictment unsealed today.
.....Kiyoshi Hatanaka, 52, of Aliso Viejo had worked for a Big Seven accounting firm before becoming Soka's finance director in 1990, a university spokeswoman said.
.....He left his job in January 2006, spokeswoman Wendy Harder said, after allegations arose that he had created sham university accounts at a Los Angeles bank, moved money into the accounts, and then cashed $10,000 checks from them.
.....…Hatanaka came with Soka when it moved from Calabasas to open a 103-acre hilltop campus in Aliso Viejo. The university is affiliated with the largest Buddhist sect in Japan, but attracts students from the U.S. and around the world.
.....Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence Kole said evidence showed Hatanaka gambled large sums of money during that period at casinos in Temecula and Las Vegas....

• This story is terribly sad. From the OC Reg: A lion caged by fire:

.....IRVINE LAKE - On a sunny day shortly after the Santiago fire, Lt. Daniel Sforza struggled with a life-and-death decision.
.....The 16-year California Fish and Game warden was lying on his belly at the entrance to a bamboo cave – responding to a report of a mountain lion acting strangely and seeking refuge inside.
.....…At the back of the cave, he observed a long, straight tail with a black tip. He was now sure it was a mountain lion. He crept in a little closer – less than 10 feet from the cat. It stirred. It was a light, tawny brown with a white muzzle and long whiskers. Its eyes glowed back at him in radiant amber.

A year before
.....In September 2006, "Female 44" was captured and collared at Camp Pendleton. She was 2, weighed 77 pounds and became part of a UC Davis Wildlife Health Center study....
.....Animals in the study are monitored by GPS collars….

On the move
.....According to data from her collar, Female 44 stayed at Camp Pendleton for 10 months, hunting deer and small rodents amid Marine training maneuvers. In May, she headed north. She followed the Santa Ana Mountains toward Los Angeles. Forty miles into her journey, she passed alongside the 91. ... She turned west, crossing the 241 toll road and skirting the urban fringe of Orange.
.....Hemmed in by cities, she sought out Irvine Ranch…. On Oct. 8, she passed next to Santiago Canyon Road, an area overrun by flames on Oct. 21, when the Santiago fire erupted.

Facing inferno
.....For the first two days of the wind-driven firestorm, she was safe in the woods a quarter mile north of Foothill Ranch. She'd avoided the worst of the flames but had no choice but to traverse hot coals on a painstaking journey to her home in Irvine Lake. Her pads were seared. It took her 17 days to cross the charred terrain toward the lake. There she sought refuge in the bamboo cave.

Standoff at the cave
.....…With a few hours of daylight left and a remote location working in his favor, Sforza had the luxury of time. He hoped to scare her off. He threw rocks at the cave but she didn't stir.
.....As daylight faded, he ran out of options. From the entrance, he fired a 12-gauge shotgun with rubber bullets at her. She jumped a few times but stayed inside.
....."I was hoping she would run off and save herself," he said. "We're not in the business to kill mountain lions."
.....Sforza crawled back into the cave. The lion still hadn't moved. It was getting dark.
....."I wasn't comfortable leaving the animal in there," he said. "I could have left the scene and hoped everything was OK, but that would have been irresponsible."
.....…Sforza loaded the shotgun again, this time firing the killing shot. …"When I saw the condition, I realized I had put her out of her misery," Sforza said. "Her pads were gone. She only had three claws left. There would have been no way she could have taken down prey."....

• I hate when this happens, too. From the New York Times: I’m a Believer:

.....…In 2001, rumors started to hit the blogosphere that Antony Flew, a British philosopher born in 1923, had found God after six decades of atheism. At first Flew denied the reports. But in May 2004 he told a conference in New York that he had indeed changed his mind and become a believer. A flurry of online pundits debated the meaning of this shocking conversion.
.....Now, in a book written, according to its title page, “with” Roy Abraham Varghese — of whom more later — Flew tells the story of his “discovery of the divine.” This sounds like a victory for the faithful in the God wars: a welcome riposte to the atheist tomes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Although Flew is not “the world’s most notorious atheist,” as the subtitle of “There Is a God” claims, and never was, even in his native Britain, he ought to count as quite a catch. Now retired from the University of Reading in Berkshire (he has also taught at Oxford and in Scotland, Canada and the United States), he is the author of several cogent and elegant works of philosophy, including accomplished critiques of religion. In many public debates he has vigorously made the case for unbelief. But I doubt thoughtful believers will welcome this volume. Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God, it rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.
.....…Oddly, Flew seems to have turned into an American as well as a believer. His intellectual autobiography is written in the language of an Englishman of his generation and class; yet when he starts to lay out his case for God, he uses Americanisms like “beverages,” “vacation” and “candy.” It is possible that Flew decided to make some passages easier on the ears of American readers or that an editor has made trivial emendations for him. But it is striking how much of Flew’s method of argument, too, has changed from that in his earlier works, and how similar it now is to the abysmal intellectual standards displayed in Varghese’s appendix. In fact, Flew told The New York Times Magazine last month that the book “is really Roy’s doing.”….