Some daffy news

.....The two items of news provided below are odd. The first story concerns the U of California's evident intention to disobey a (soon-to-be) new state law designed to protect free-speech minded advisors to school journalism/newspaper programs. (They tend to get fired. Remember Saddleback College's Kathleen Dorantes?)
.....The second story concerns Philadelphia's plan to honor Charles Darwin (as we approach the 150th year since the publication of Origin of Species). That's great, but an organizer of that effort—a Dr. Janet Monge—is quoted (by the New York Times) as saying things that strike me as quite daffy. Judge for yourself.

.....NOPE, WE WON'T BE OBEYING THAT LAW. In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed, we learn of a very odd conflict between California legislators and the University of California: Above the Law?:

.....Student newspaper advisers are something of an endangered species these days. They often get caught in the middle when administrators and student journalists clash over content, and in more than a few cases on college campuses in recent years, advisers …have found themselves losing their jobs….
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.....It was with several recent such controversies in mind, and numerous instances of censorship at high schools in California, that the state’s Legislature overwhelmingly approved legislation this month that would prohibit a college or school district from firing, suspending or otherwise retaliating against an employee for acting to protect a student’s free speech. Last week, with the measure, SB 1370, sailing for passage and a trip to the governor’s office for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hoped-for signature, the University of California quietly revealed its opposition to the bill.
.....In a letter to State Sen. Leland Yee, the legislation’s sponsor, a lobbyist for the university system “respectfully” warned Yee that the university did not expect to abide by the requirement if it was enacted. “The University of California must maintain its ability to correct situations in which a member of its teaching corps or a University employee has failed to comply with academic teaching standards, violated UC policies, broken rules or laws, or misused University resources.” wrote Happy Chastain, senior legislative director for state government relations in the UC president’s office. “Under the provisions of SB 1370, UC is concerned that its ability to act in such circumstances would be restricted and expose the University to frivolous and unwarranted litigation.”
.....The last-minute opposition from UC officials infuriated Yee and other supporters of the bill. Not only did they challenge the university’s logic for fighting the measure, disputing the suggestion that it would restrict its institutions’ ability to punish faculty members who teach inappropriate material in the classroom; more broadly, they also expressed surprise that the university could assert the right not to abide by the law.
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.....SB 1370 is only the latest piece of legislation aimed at ensuring the speech rights of student journalists. At the core of the effort is 1992’s California Education Code Section 66301, broadly protected the right of college students not to be punished solely “on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication that, when engaged in outside a campus of those institutions, is protected from governmental restriction by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution” or California’s own Constitution.
.....In 2006, the California Legislature approved a measure (AB 2581) sponsored by Senator Yee that, in the wake of 2005’s controversial Hosty v. Carter decision, prohibited colleges in the state from censoring student newspapers or exercising “prior restraint” of student speech or the student press.
.....The reason Yee followed up with the pending legislation, SB 1370, said [Adam] Keigwin, his aide, is because campus media advisers are often thrust into the position of defending (or not defending) the student journalists whose work they oversee. If campus administrators can readily dismiss a faculty or staff member who stands up for student journalists, and replace him or her with someone who won’t, Yee asserts, the 2006 legislation can be seriously undermined.
.....“Since administrators are unable [under AB2851] to exercise prior restraint with regard to a student publication, they lean on advisers to do what they legally cannot,” said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which supports the Yee measure. “When advisers refuse, they are punished because administrators know they will face no legal consequences. SB 1370 is necessary to close this gaping loophole in the law.”
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.....Last Monday, on the day that the state Assembly approved Yee’s legislation, the University of California — for the first time, according to aides to Yee — expressed its opposition to the measure. In the letter to Yee, Chastain noted that the university “feels strongly about academic and speech freedoms,” but argued that existing laws and university policies “already afford substantial freedom of speech protections for students and faculty.” The fact that the issue raised by the proposed legislation may not be an issue at UC, Chastain suggests, is “evidenced, in part, by our inability to identify a single example of the University of California acting to discipline employees for supporting the free speech of University students.”
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.....What would happen, the university suggested, if “during delivery of a course in mathematics, a student uses class time to promote opinions unrelated to mathematics or the course materials, and ... the instructor of record not only allows this behavior to persist, but also reinforces the student’s beliefs in class.” In such a case, in which “the course is not being taught according to the curriculum approved by the University,” Chastain wrote, UC must retain “the right to take appropriate measures to ensure that our standards and policies are upheld.”
.....Supporters of the media adviser law were surprised by the last-minute nature of the university’s opposition ("It came totally out of the blue,” said Keigwin, “on the day after it passed the second house — that’s just not the way you do things") and by some of its assertions. They argued, for instance, that the example cited in Chastain’s letter is an illegitimate comparison, because the university would have every right to punish a faculty member who is not teaching the curriculum.
.....“The letter cites as a hypothetical example a math instructor who allowed a student to promote opinions unrelated to the subject during class time, suggesting that under the law, the university would be prohibited from punishing the teacher for tolerating the disruptive student speech,” [Mark] Goodman, the Kent State ... [Chair of Scholastic Journalism], wrote in a post on the blog of the Center for Scholastic Journalism. “Of course, the letter never explains why the University believes that off-topic student speech in the classroom would be protected by the law in the first place, a requirement for the university employee protections of the bill to come into play.”
.....In addition, just because UC has not punished a media adviser or other employee for protecting the free speech rights of students does not mean that university employees do not feel constrained and do not need protection, said Keigwin, the Yee spokesman. The Student Press Law Center has received numerous complaints in recent years about free speech being impaired at UC campuses, and since Yee introduced his bill, his office has received complaints about as many as a dozen cases “where the adviser felt some pressure to steer the paper in a certain way,” said Keigwin. “Speech has still been squelced at the college level.”
.....More fundamentally, Goodman and others are perplexed by the university’s assertion that it would not be obliged to abide by SB 1370 should it become law. In an e-mail message late Sunday, a UC spokesman, Brad Hayward, said that the university’s Constitutional status gives it “discretion in implementing state law.... In this particular case, the bill proposes to amend Section 66301 of the California Education Code, which is within Part 40 of the Education Code. Another section of Part 40, Section 67400, states, “No provision of [Part 40] shall apply to the University of California except to the extent that the Regents of the University of California, by appropriate resolution, make that provision applicable.”
.....In this case, Hayward and Chastain warn, the regents do not plan to let the media adviser provision apply if it should become law.
.....How is it that the university sees itself as not being subject to the media advisers’ legislation but bound, presumably, by the underlying free speech legislation on which it is based? Goodman asked. “I don’t see a legal distinction between one and the other. Why do they think this one is problematic when the underlying statute is not?”….

.....PHILADELPHIA TO HONOR DARWIN. In this morning’s New York Times: Philadelphia Set to Honor Darwin and Evolution:

.....Nine academic, scientific and cultural institutions around the city are holding a Year of Evolution, a series of exhibitions, seminars and lectures to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin next February, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, “The Origin of Species.”
.....Events will include a talk by John E. Jones III, a federal judge who ruled in 2005 that teaching intelligent design — the belief that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must be the work of a higher power rather than of evolution — in public school science classes was unconstitutional.
.....The intent of the citywide event, said Janet M. Monge, one of the organizers, is to increase public understanding of evolution and science in general at a time when polls show that a majority of Americans believe God created man in his present form and that the number of people who accept the evolutionary model of human origins is declining.
.....“The strengths and weaknesses of evolution are the strengths and weaknesses of science,” said Dr. Monge, the curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. “You don’t get answers.” [?]
.....She said the Philadelphia events were also intended to encourage people to consider the evolutionary alternative to the biblical account of the origins of man, as represented by the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a $35 million institution that has attracted more than 400,000 visitors since it opened in May 2007.
.....Ken Ham, the president of the Creation Museum, said he expected to see more pro-evolution events as the Darwin anniversary approaches. Mr. Ham said that in response his museum was planning its own exhibits on the origins of life.
.....“The culture war is definitely heating up,” he said.
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.....Creationists and their allies in the intelligent design movement suffered a setback when Judge Jones rejected a plan by the school board in Dover, Pa., to teach their ideas. Judge Jones sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and others who sued the school board, arguing that intelligent design was a religious rather than scientific concept and had no place in science classes….

.....I do not object to Monge's statement (according to the Times) that “The strengths and weaknesses of evolution are the strengths and weaknesses of science.” That makes sense. But she is also quoted as saying, "You don’t get answers.”
.....In the sciences?
.....I just don't understand that remark. It is certainly true that scientific theories do not answer all questions that one might have. This is perfectly understood by scientists. But one would never express this truism by saying that science provides no answers.
.....Perhaps the point is that scientific theories are never proved in a strong, deductive sense. A good theory, scientists tell us, is highly probable, not proved. ("You can disprove a theory, but you can't prove one," scientists often say.) But that means that science at times provides highly probable answers. That is, it provides answers.
.....Also (but less worrisome), why does Monge elevate Creationism as she seems to, for she describes evolution as the "alternative" view to Creationism. But surely the (at most) "alternative" view is Creationism, not Evolution. Backed by overwhelming evidence and reasons, scientists teach that evolution occurs—largely through the mechanism of Darwinian natural selection—and this explains much about what we observe in the natural world. People who fail to understand the standards of science (e.g., the importance of simplicity, fruitfulness, predictive power, etc.) might suppose that Creationism offers a good alternative explanation of the facts. Well, yes, it is a kind of alternative theory that in some sense can explain the facts. But, if so, it is also a very poor theory (e.g., it falsely implies or holds that the Earth is but a few thousand years old; it suggests that organisms have no design flaws—a perfect designer will produce a perfect design—but plainly some do). More importantly, it is decidedly inferior to "evolutionary" theory as it is now understood. (Again, think of simplicity, predictive power.)
.....Evolution is the probable truth about things. Creationism is the wacky "alternative" view. In truth, even calling it an "alternative" theory elevates it groundlessly. It's an alternative scientific theory like homeopathy is an "alternative" medicine. That is, it's an alternative only among the ignorant or goofy.
.....My main beef, though, is with the "don't get answers" malarkey. Maybe the reporter screwed up. Somebody sure did.

WHITE SHARK. This was posted at the OC Reg just a couple of hours ago: Large great white shark follows Outriggers about a mile offshore in Laguna. Crazy, man.

.....Sunny says "hey."