Thursday, November 26, 2009

Pleasant, gaudy, uncanny IVC


The A-quad. We used to have a clock tower here. Rot.
We saved the clock's hands. Metal.


The new commencement zone, between Biz-Tick and PAC.
Nice, but, here, the sun is all wrong in the late afternoon, when the ceremony occurs.
Photographers grumble and fume.


Biz-Tick at left; PAC at right.
Once were orange groves. Strawberry fields.


Late afternoon, long shadows.
Two people converse, saying nothing.


"Physical education." Odd phrase, that.
Is the physical educable?


More "physical education."
You hold the racket like this.
"Don't forget to breath."


We call this building Biz-Tick. It's cold and new inside. They teach here, in rooms. So do we. We know not what they do. They know not what we do. Whiteboards always erased, leaving no clues.

Jason's hanger shots


"In the Hangar"

Our pal Jason (aka 13 Stoploss) somehow got access to the old blimp/helicopter hangers in Tustin (on Tuesday). He took some seriously cool pictures. Check out the massive doors, the cavernous interior!


"Door"

An enormous dog, sitting.


"Massive Sliding Door"

Who could dream of such a thing? Did he start with a blank slate? "Here," he said. "Make this."


"Beware Rotor Blades"

How many Marines and sailors were Vic Morrowed?
Not many, I bet. They heeded the sign.


"Sliding Door"

This one provides some sense of the hanger's size.
The building in back: so damned small! The man at bottom is an ant.
(Is that palm tree dead or alive?)

Llewellyn: combating the Left’s dreams of “one-world domination”!


They seem like us, and yet they are not.

Hey, just who is this David Llewellyn, the lawyer Raghu Mathur hired to defend the district in the SOCCCD “prayer” lawsuit?

Well, among other things, Mr. L is on the staff of a Sacramento radio show and webpage called In the Public Square.



IPS's website offers a handy and informative “statement of purpose”:

IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE … is a talk radio program hosted by John Snyder that is broadcast on KTKZ 1380 AM in Sacramento … It is also a webpage organization aimed at engaging secular audiences in conversation about contemporary issues, culture and politics.... In the Public Square exists to provide an intelligent and genial forum for the discussion of important issues in contemporary life from a Christian perspective….

CIVILITY 'R' US. Sounds good. IPS also embraces “civility,” “eschewing ad hominems and invectives and slander.”

IPS host John Snyder is described as having a “country-fried attitude imported from the red states.”

Beyond Snyder, IPS has a staff of a dozen or so, including someone named “Mr. Curmudgeon,” who is described as “abrasive and irascible.”

And Mr. L? David Llewellyn is called “Mr. Constitution,” and he is IPS’s “declared ‘generalist’ and commentator on all things legal and cultural.”

THE LAW AND EVOLUTION. On the IPS website, I found one “paper” and two commentaries written by Llewellyn. The paper, entitled “Evolution, Public Education and the Law” (9/12/08), lays out the history of what L calls the “Lincoln-Darwin Debate” as it has played out in the U.S. courts.

Lincoln, says L, embraced noble “self-evident” truths and rights provided by God. Darwin, on the other hand, spurted forth a very different ideology, one that has also had immense social impact.

What is that ideology? Well,

[Darwin discovered] the scientific principle of natural selection, thereby establishing the theory of evolution, which has become the prevailing scientific explanation of the origins of the universe, life and human life, without need for the intervention of a Creator God.

In today’s America, says L, the debate continues to rage between the Lincolnian “conceived in liberty”-“created equal” philosophy and “the social influence of the central tenet of evolution, ‘survival of the fittest.’”

LLEWELLYN DOESN'T GET IT. Uh-oh. Already it is evident that L doesn’t understand Darwin’s science. “Natural selection” (or evolution, the phenomenon that natural selection helps to explain) is not an attempt to explain “the origins of the universe, life and human life.” It is, rather, a mechanism to account for the apparent fact of evolution (i.e., the apparent fact that species change over time).

How can L not know that?

Darwinian biology does not exclude God, for it has a limited scope. It does not offer a view regarding that which it does not seek to explain, e.g., the origin of life or the universe.

And in what sense is “survival of the fittest” the “central tenet” of evolution? (By the way, the phrase is not Darwin’s.) It seems to me that “survival of the fittest” is a rough approximation of the result of natural selection, a mindless process of change driven by random variations in the context of competition for survival.

Well, whatever.

At one point, L declares that “People can and do believe in biological evolution who reject the philosophy and cultural influence of social Darwinism.”

“Social Darwinism”? My Mac's dictionary defines the phrase as follows:

the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was advocated by Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform.

No surprise there. Those familiar with the historical philosophy of Social Darwinism are aware that it is not to be confused with Darwin’s science, which, as Darwin himself understood, was incapable of justifying some action or practice (such as racism or exploitation).

But L seems to use the phrase to refer to the alleged Darwinian philosophy in the above debate or to modern evolution-based biology.

Could it be that L is unaware of the meaning of the term “social Darwinism”?

Maybe he thinks that there's some other influential philosophy, which he mistakenly labels "social Darwinism," that is erroneously associated with Darwin's science. Maybe so. But then what's his beef with Darwin? (It seems to me that the one group who can be counted on to misinterpret Darwin is L's own anti-evolution bunch.)

I have not read the rest of this lengthy paper, though, in perusing it, I gather that L is sympathetic to the idea that “evolution” isn’t science but is in fact an ideology or religion.

Good grief. It's science. (And insisting that it's "just a theory" is just confused.)


They know nothing, and yet they are confident.

SARCASTIC CIVILITY? One of L’s commentaries on the IPS website is pleasantly entitled “Thank God for the Disdainful Mouthiness of the Left” (9/12/08). Despite IPS’s professed fidelity to civility and eschewery of ad hominems, their man L here discusses the “MSM” (aka “main stream media”) and its “snarling” contempt for Sarah Palin. The “Left,” says L, responded to Palin’s prayers about the war in Iraq as follows:

"There is no God, to have a will, to favor a war, to free the oppressed — and all of the biblical prophets to the contrary be damned," they [the Left or the MSM] have pontificated. (Author’s free translation.)

L snidely suggests that the Left/MSM sees itself as God:

they believe that they are god…, that their Creation myth pronouncements of "Let there be President Barack Obama, and it was so" and "they saw President Obama, and it was very good," are the words of god, that all people must bow down before them and worship the one-eyed glowing idol in their living rooms upon which they appear….

I think he's pissed.

The ever-civil Mr. L ends with: “Well, at least the Left still have their irreligion and anti-gun moral superiority to cling to.”

In another commentary (Thirteen Reasons to Hate Governor Sarah Palin [9/5/08]), L directs still more sarcasm at the “left” and the “media”—again for their criticism of then-VP candidate Sarah Palin, whom L clearly admires. (He thinks she’s smart.)

Some leftists, alleges L, have criticized Palin’s decision to carry on with the campaign despite her responsibilities to her newborn and to her pregnant daughter.

L fumes:

Imagine that Chelsea Clinton got pregnant and someone suggested that Senator Hillary Clinton was disqualified to run for President because she had an unmarried, pregnant daughter. Preposterous, right? But the blind rage of the Left makes that argument unabashedly, and idiotically, against Governor Palin. ... Should all women quit their jobs if their daughters get pregnant? That’s what the Left and its media commentators are saying, apparently unconcerned for their runaway hypocrisy. It’s insulting to all women, liberal as well as conservative, and dangerously lunatic. Who can trust these people to think rationally on any controversial social or political issue?

The left, says L, is blind, idiotic, hypocritical, lunatic, and irrational.

And that’s just one paragraph! How’s that for civility?


Mr. Pyne seemed mean and rotten. He did not reach the age of 50.
Who can explain him?

Mr. L's logic ain't so hot either. In making his charge of hypocrisy against the left, remarkably, Mr. Llewellyn ignores two facts: (1) Palin herself has a new child and (2) though Chelsea Clinton is nearly 30 years old, Palin’s daughter is a teenager.

Same difference, I guess.

L also notes that Palin has a 19-year-old son in the military who is ipso facto “better qualified than Barack Obama to be commander-in-chief.”

Wow. That's some logic.

Mr Llewellyn believes in strong finishes. He ends his commentary with a real doozy:

“The Left ignored Alaska , and now the wicked Queen of the West has arisen to trouble their dreams of one-world domination.”

Yeah, that's my dream. I wanna dominate. Just one world though. Don't need two.

Choi is right but Wagner is way righter

If Allan Bartlett of Red County/OC is to be believed (here), soon, Don Wagner will be facing some new and significant competition in his bid to become Assemblyman (70th). Says Bartlett, the buzz is that Republican Irvine Councilman Steven Choi will be joining the race any day now.

Bartlett notes that Choi will be a strong candidate with good name recognition (in the 70th). On the other hand,
He won't be able to lay claim to being the consensus conservative/constitutional choice in this race. That honor is going to Don Wagner and it's not really even close. That point will be important as we get down to brass tacks in this race. All you have to do is look what happened back in 2004 when the liberal Republican Christy Christich ran against Chuck DeVore. Chuck was the consensus conservative choice back then and he ended up beating Christich by 20 points.
Does Bartlett know what he’s talking about? I have no idea.

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...