OK, now it's raining fireballs—and N-bombs from the lips of OC rat bastard Mike Carona

.....This just in: Fireball streaks across the sky:

6:02 pm: A fireball reportedly streaked across the northwestern sky Tuesday morning and was likely visible in Orange County, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and even as far away as Las Vegas, according to the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
.....About a dozen people called the department beginning at about 10:45 a.m., said dispatch supervisor Tom Barnes. Some said they thought the fireball hit the ground, but fire officials sent to investigate found nothing.
.....“They described it as appearing in the northwest portion of the sky, and heading straight down, yellowish green, and it had pieces trailing behind it,” Barnes said....

—My theory is that this FIREBALL is a warning shot from the Lord, and it's directed at OC Republicans. It's the only thing that makes sense.

IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE'S "HOMETOWN HERO," MIKE CARONA, THROWING THE N-BOMB ON SECRETLY-RECORDED TAPE.
.....This just in at the OC Reg: Carona uses the n-word in secret recordings:

.....Defense attorneys for former sheriff Michael S. Carona want to keep his federal jury from hearing portions of secretly recorded conversations where Carona makes sexually and racially insensitive comments.
.....The tapes, between Carona and former political confidante Donald Haidl, reveal Carona casually using the n-word, dropping several f-bombs, talking about his sexual conquests and making sexual remarks about other women.
…
.....Carona made the statements last year during three conversations with former ally and Assistant Sheriff Donald Haidl.
…
.....In one excerpt, Carona contends that he does not believe he has done anything wrong, but that he enjoyed his time as sheriff.
....."You're right, I've had a life that's been absolutely blessed," he tells Haidl. "I've met millionaires, billionaires, I've traveled on personal airplanes, and I never shook anybody down for any s***, so. … Not that I haven't, you know, drank some great wine, and had great booze and ... got some, you know, phenomenal (sex) along the way…"….

PICTURED:

• An artist's conception of, um, a freakin' fireball
• Trustee Dave "Quisling" Lang getting his photo op with Sheriff "N-bomb" Carona at the IVC 9-11 ceremony. Dave betrayed his faculty supporters for something—probably for a promise of help from his GOP pals on the board to become OC Treasurer. Dave better hope the Lord wasn't paying attention. I do hope there is a "Lord" and that he was fucking paying attention.
• Trustee Dave "Quisling" Lang, Chancellor Raghu Mathur, Trustee Don Wagner, Trustee John Williams, and Trustee Tom Fuentes—Republicans all—taking in the unmitigated piety and heroism of then-Sheriff Mike Carona at the 9-11 ceremony at IVC in 2007. In truth, it was already abundantly clear what kind of guy Carona was. But that didn't matter to this crowd, who sang his praises, as per usual. You shoulda heard Tom Fuentes talkin' up Mike that day. I kept thinking, "why don't they get a room?" Listen, if there were a Lord, and if the Fellow were just, these people woulda just burst into flames, but that didn't happen, and so there ain't. Not that I want anybody bursting into flames, but I hear the Lord tends to get Medieval. It's not what I would do. I'd just make 'em eat shit for a few years. Leave it at that. Hell, months would be fine. Goddamit I'd accept one day of shit-eating. I'm such a goddam softy, it's ridiculous.

WE’RE, LIKE, AVERAGE, HAPPINESSWISE. OK, I know this is old news, ‘cause I already saw it on 60 Minutes, but, today, Reuters offered this: Denmark world's happiest country, survey finds.

.....According to the survey, the U.S. is 16th, which is nothing to write home about if you ask me.
.....The top rated countries are

1. Denmark
2. Puerto Rico
3. Colombia
4. Northern Ireland
5. Iceland
6. Switzerland
7. Ireland
8. the Netherlands
9. Canada
10. Sweden

.....According to Reuters, “The survey, first done in 1981, has kept to two simple questions: [1] ‘Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?’ And, [2] ‘All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?’”

Mr. Fish is all wet: teaching and revealing beliefs; God; sex; volcanoes

.....This post refers to my previous post, which concerned Stanley Fish's view that, in the classroom, teachers should simply keep their opinions to themselves.

THINGS GET COMPLICATED

.....I’ve always rejected teaching that proselytizes*. I reject the notion that my job, or part of my job, is persuading students of some political (etc.) view or philosophy.
.....My position is a common one among teachers. Essentially (cliché alert!), as a philosopher and a teacher, I see myself as teaching students how to think, not what to think. Understandably, students sometimes fail to perceive the distinction.
.....But what is the point of teaching how to think if that knowledge doesn't lead to beliefs and convictions? No point at all. You can't teach how to think without implying, to some extent, what to think. And so things get complicated.

.....For instance, I teach students to approach beliefs in relation to reasons and arguments. I teach students how to distinguish between good reasoning and bad reasoning. (I took a good deal of logic in grad school that prepared me to do this.)

.....But that doesn’t mean that I must not reveal my view or opinion in the classroom. In fact, often, by not doing so, the logic ("critical thinking") instructor risks portraying “logic” in a way that implies its impotence or irrelevance, its status as an abstraction with no connection to the concrete.

.....Here’s a simple example. In the course of teaching students about fallacies, I explain why one must not engage in or tolerate “cherry picking”—i.e., focusing only on evidence/reasons that favor “one’s view” while ignoring all other evidence.
.....But, at least a few years ago, we Americans were in a moment in history in which the most important event in the world—the invasion of Iraq—quite clearly came about and was “sold” to the public through cherry picking. There really was no doubt about this, and, over time, the case for this has become overwhelming.
.....Given the importance of the war—especially for Americans, who decided to wage it—I wouldn’t consider myself a responsible teacher if I did not point this out.
.....I told my students: “If you’re willing to cherry pick the evidence, you’ll make mistakes. Sometimes, those mistakes will be serious. Look.”

.....If a professor of vulcanology takes his class to a volcano, and he/she proceeds to lecture (from a safe distance) about, say, "pyroclastic flow," he sure would be a knucklehead if, at that moment, pyroclastic flow started pouring down the volcano and he didn't mention it!


.....I do not come to class simply asserting that the Bush administration are bad or confused or dishonest people. I discuss what it means to think well and honestly. I discuss and warn against, in particular, fundamental fallacies of reasoning. Now, as it happens, a commission of one of those fallacies was at the heart of the most important event of our time.
.....So I made the point. How could I not?
.....Students discern my view (well, part of it) about the buildup to war: it involved the cherry picking of evidence. I don't disguise this. Why would I do that?

.....That the Bushies systematically ignored evidence to the contrary of their position (about Iraq & WMD, Saddam & Al-Qaeda, etc.) is as plain as day. And yet, some will now protest: it's only your opinion that the Bushies "cherry picked." —Ah, yes. There is no objective truth. There's only "opinion." That's what I love about many conservatives today. They are Postmodernists. Only they're too fucking ignorant to know it.

ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

.....In my “intro” classes, I discuss the well-known arguments for and against the existence of God. It would be disingenuous, I believe, for me to offer a logical critique of these arguments (that’s what philosophers do, friends) without noting that these arguments are (with the possible exception of inductive forms of the "problem of evil") very weak. Everyone in my field (including believers) knows it. Anyone with a grasp of logic will draw that conclusion or some version of it. Competence ensures that.
.....Should I hide my view on the quality of these arguments? Even when my (perfectly ordinary) application of logical standards to these arguments in the classroom plainly answers the “quality” question? If an argument is demonstrably weak, then I need to say so. What's the point of philosophy if it doesn't point to anything?
.....I do not, of course, declare to my students that God does not exist. But that is only and exactly because an application of the methods of the logician/philosopher do not in this case warrant such a declaration. It warrants (demands) the statement that these arguments are weak: "Maybe there are strong arguments for God's existence; we’ve not found them yet. We'll keep looking. Does God exist? Dunno."
.....On the other hand, one needs reasons for one’s beliefs. Good ones. Lots of people believe in God. Where are the good reasons for their belief? Again, they may exist, but, roughly speaking, philosophers (and everyone else) have not yet found them. With regard to having good arguments, theists are much like believers in Bigfoot.

.....I have no doubt that many conservatives (and a few of my students, too) imagine that people like me enter the classroom “teaching” atheism and the wickedness and incompetence of the Bush administration.
.....No. It’s not like that. It’s nothing like that.

"IT'S SELF-EVIDENT!"


.....At this point, the real enemy among us is something that much of the Postmodernist crowd and much of the conservative crowd have in common. They don't really believe in reasons. They don't have a clue about evidence or the standards of logic or scientific method. (To see the point as it concerns the "theory" [postmodernist] crowd, study the Sokal Hoax. Trust me, it's an eye-opener.) They just have Beliefs. Theirs are right, they think. Others' are wrong. It's "obvious." So they shout and sneer.
.....No. If one wants truth, one needs to work with reasons. Anything can be "self-evident," you know. Self-evidence means zilch.

.....In the end, it's how you think, not what you think, that matters.

(Hey, the title of this post mentioned sex! What about that? A: False advertising, plain and simple.)

*With some groups of students (mature, serious students), I have on occasion laid my cards about an issue or question on the table. For instance, I have done this while discussing, say, the moral responsibilities of a citizen or a parent or a spouse. (Among other things, I teach Moral Philosophy, my specialty.) Here, I have sometimes allowed myself to think out loud and to express a view to which I have gradually arrived over years—but never with the idea of "teaching" it, though I plainly am attracted to it, despite the usual reservations. Part of my motivation is to model grappling with an issue, sometimes for many years, and trying to arrive at some understanding. I do believe that, at such times, students understand that I do not intend to be "teaching" the view and that I welcome disagreement and challenge. When I think about such moments, Professor Fish's view strikes me as especially wrongheaded. Hiding my perspective would make me a less effective teacher. Far less.

Damned conservative

.....Stanley Fish is, of course, a prominent literary scholar (and New York Times columnist) who is often associated with so-called “postmodernism,” a relativistic philosophy, largely imported from France (like La vache qui rit), that inspires much conservative carpage and consternation.
.....But conservatives aren’t the only critics. Many trained in philosophy in this country (so-called "analytic" philosophers) are generally hostile to Fish’s so-called “philosophy” and to the philosophy of the proponents of “theory” (i.e., postmodern theory such as Deconstructionism) generally. I have always been in the latter camp. (See Stanley Fish. Note philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s critique of Fish. See also The Sokal affair.)
.....But Fish is a complex guy. Though he shows no signs of abandoning his (unfortunate) epistemological beliefs, re teaching, he rejects the proselytizing approach of many of his postmodernist colleagues. In fact, he sounds damned conservative.
.....In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: Fish to Profs: Stick to Teaching:

.....…In a new book to be published this month by Oxford University Press, [Stanley] Fish, the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, argues that instructors need to approach their jobs narrowly — and to, as the title implies, Save the World on Your Own Time.
…
.....As someone who’s been both derided from the right as a postmodernist and recently described by his editor as a “curmudgeonly semiconservative guy,” Fish’s own positions have evolved over time and can sometimes be hard to pin down ….
…
.....Fish spoke over the phone with Inside Higher Ed last week from upstate New York, where he lives for about half the year. Below are excerpts from that conversation.

Q: How does the general public view academe, and how does that view differ from reality?

A: I think the perception is that college campuses these days are populated by liberal/radical faculty who are always imposing their loyalties on the students in an attempt ... to recruit students into a political agenda.

The reality is that the percentage ... who do something like that is perhaps small, I would say, at the most, 10 percent, probably more like 5 or 6 percent. But the success of the neoconservative public relations machine has implanted in the public mind this idea of a university simply permeated by political ideologues masking as pedagogues....
…
Q: But even aside from political implications, you argue, especially in the teaching of writing, that such agendas can actually have a negative effect on learning.

A: Whether anyone notices it or not or comments on it or not, the teaching of writing in universities is a disaster. [There is] the conviction on the part of many composition teachers that what they are really teaching is some form of social justice, and that the teaching of writing ... takes a back seat. And in fact in many classrooms the teaching of writing as a craft as something that has rules with appropriate decorums ... is in fact demonized as an indication of the hegemony of the powers that be. This happens over and over again in classrooms and it’s an absolute disaster.

Q: Are you mostly talking about “quips” — say, an aside about Dick Cheney in the middle of a lecture?

A: It signals something to the students about what the views of the professor are.... It’s my conviction that teachers should not have posters ... on the doors of their office that indicate some political, partisan or ideological affiliation. The office ... is an extension of the scene of teaching, and no student should enter an office [believing that] some ideas are going to be preferred and others are better not uttered. The larger part are those professors who are sincerely convinced that it is their job to take their students and mold both their characters and their ideological views....
…
.... [At The New York Times, a]ny number of readers will testify, and I think that is the word, that they went to college and university never knowing what the political and ideological affiliations of their professors might have been, and several have written in to say when they later discovered by accident ... they were surprised, they never would have guessed….
…
Q: Do you believe the current movement against perceived bias in academe is a recent trend, or part of longstanding cultural currents?

A: The anti-intellectualism that’s always been a part of the disdain for the academy doesn’t, I think, operate in the current scene of the culture wars at least as I describe them.... This is not a repetition of the old anti-intellectualism which has been around forever; I think this is much more specifically political and ideological.
…
Q: You’ve worked at both private and public institutions. Do you see any difference in their missions?

A: Well, there certainly is a difference in terms of the funding and the way in which funding is dispensed....

The interesting thing, or actually distressing thing ... is that at the same time that the legislature of many states takes the money away from universities, the legislatures seek to impose more and more curricular and faculty control over the universities, so it’s a very unhappy situation in which colleges are being told we’re going to take your money away and we’re going to increasingly monitor every single thing you do.

Q: You describe a novel approach to handling state lawmakers who control the purse strings, a tactic you used during your time as a dean: criticizing, even belittling them, in public. Did it work?

A: It worked in a limited sense. My response was, look, higher education administrators go hat in hand ... they’re always in a begging or petitionary posture, and that just doesn’t work. People don’t in fact respond well to that, and I found what they did respond well to was confrontation of an aggressive kind.... If you say to state legislators, “You guys don’t know what you’re talking about! What if I came to your offices and told you within five minutes and without having any experience ... what it is you should be doing, you’d throw me out, laughing me out of the room.” Well that’s what we should be doing.... “What do you know about 18th-century French poetry? ...”
…
Q: As a veteran of the canon battles between proponents of French “theory” and the traditionalists, do you think the outcome has had an impact on the public debate about politics in academe?

A: I think academia is very fundamentally different.... I’m old enough to remember when there were three TV networks, NBC, ABC and CBS. That meant that everybody watched the same thing.... But of course now there are all kinds of television networks and semi-networks and so forth, and everything is diffused. The same thing has happened in the curriculum, at least in the social sciences and the humanities, so that whereas it used to be the case that the same set of texts in relation to relatively the same set of questions was taught everywhere in more or less the same way, now there’s an explosion, a tremendous variety. Much less of a mechanism of exclusion.... That’s a huge and important change.

And I think in the end, or actually the middle, the theorists won. They won partly because of the statistics of age and death, that is, the new people who were coming into the departments had all been trained in and excited by [theory] and they trained another generation of students.

I believe that to be a beneficial change even though I also believe ... that a lot of people made a mistake when they politicized theory and thought that the lessons of theory could be immediately translated into an agenda that could be actively pursued in the classroom. [T]heory’s rise has contributed to the politicization of some classrooms in higher education today. So it’s a mixed blessing.

Q: Any parting thoughts on the book as a whole?

A: [I’d like to] rehearse for your readers the three-part mantra which organizes the book: Do your job, don’t try to do someone else’s job and don’t let anyone else do your job. And I think that if we as instructors ... would adhere to that mantra, we would be more responsible in the prosecution of our task and less vulnerable to the criticisms of those who would want to either undermine or control us.