(We're reporting on the election from the perspective of the South Orange County Community College District, which sports three board trustees running for office tonight: John Williams, David Lang, and Don Wagner.)
UPSHOT (as of 11:30 p.m.): Williams is the clear winner in his race. Lang appears to be a clear loser in his. Wagner's in the middle of a tight three-way race. There likely won't be clarity about that one until the morning. For a great account of the Sheriff's race tonight, check out Spencer Kornhaber's post.
8:25 p.m.: Rebel Girl just called and instructed me to report the following. (She's really into this. But, right now, she's gotta make dinner for Red and Limber Lou.)
So far, they're only reporting on absentee ballots, which trend conservatively. But it looks like John "Dolt" Williams, as expected, is doing quite well with 60% of the vote so far (for OC Public Administrator). Callahan is a distant second.
Dave Lang, who's running for Treasurer, is a distant third in his race. It looks pretty bad for Quisling Boy. RodentHouse (or whatever) is ahead of that gal, what's-her-name. The Moorlach gal.
The 70th AD race looks like the fun one to watch tonight. Steve Choi and Don Wagner are neck-'n'-neck, and Amante isn't too far behind. A three-way race!
We'll keep updating through the night.
Oh yeah. And Hutchins has a commanding early lead over the Hunt people. (There's two of 'em, right?)
8:45: Voice of OC reports the following for the Treasurer's race:
Keith Rodenhuis 44,749 votes 38.7 percent
Shari Freidenrich 37,450 votes 32.4 percent
David Lang 19,192 votes 16.6 percent
Patrick Desmond 14,249 votes 12.3 percent
For Public Administrator:
John Williams 66,276 votes 60.8 percent
Colleen Callahan 25,699 votes 23.6 percent
Steve Rocco 10,372 votes 9.5 percent
Kevin Vann 6,577 votes 6 percent
Here's what Red County/OC has for OC Sheriff:
Sandra Hutchens: 56.1%
Bill Hunt: 24.5%
Craig Hunter: 19.4%
9:28
Orange Juice blog seems to have very current info on the local elections.
A half hour ago, Art Pedroza (who backs Choi in the 70th AD race) reported: “Just visited Dr. Steven Choi’s Election Night Party in Irvine. Congratulated him on being on top, by 1%, over Don Wagner. Amante is in third. These are the early results. I expect that Choi will hold on to his lead as Wagner and Amante split the hard-core base…."
Could be.
9:48
70th AD:
Steven Choi 29.9%
Don Wagner 29.1%
Jerry Amante 28.6%
10:00
Unfortunately, early indications are that Gary "Corrupt Gasbag" Miller is creaming Liberatore.
GARY G. MILLER (REP) 7,581 53.7%
PHIL LIBERATORE (REP) 4,652 33.0%
Just after 11:00:
with 399 precincts out of 2084 reporting:
Lang is still in third with 16%
Choi continues to lead Wagner with 30% to Don's 29.3. Amante follows close behind with 28%.
Williams is the clear winner for Public Administrator though it's worth noting that Steve Rocco is in third, having somehow convinced over 13,000 people to vote for him.
The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT — "[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Pics of Friday's 25 year wingding at IVC
The "show" part of the celebration occurred in IVC's marvelous new Performing Arts Center.
The photographs do indeed suggest that it was a fun. I’ve swiped a few photos to give you a sense of the thing. But do use the link above and check 'em all out.
They look a bit grim. Or Wary. And semi-dressed.
We seem to specialize in this sort of thing at IVC.
Big heart, enlarged heart
.
A half hour ago, the OC Reg’s Erika I. Ritchie posted an update on the “Paul Wagner” story:
Family: Candidate's son had enlarged heart
Assembly candidate Don Wagner said Tuesday that while results from a coroner's autopsy are still inconclusive, an initial finding revealed that his son, Paul Wagner, who was found dead in his car on Saturday, had a severely enlarged heart.
"They found the heart was enlarged with a circumference of 480 cc when the normal heart is 300cc," Don Wagner said. "They found that to be an anomaly.''
Deputy Coroner Mitchell Sigal said the initial findings from Monday's autopsy were inconclusive and that final results would require more testing, including toxicology results. Sigal declined to release more information.
On Saturday at 9:31 a.m. Newport Beach police found Paul Wagner, 20, dead in his Acura SUV in a parking structure on the Newport Beach peninsula. Initial investigation revealed that Wagner, who worked as a valet supervisor, may have been watching a movie on his laptop while waiting for cars to be parked or picked up. Police found no signs of foul play.
Family members said Wagner was diagnosed as bi-polar and had been on a series of medications. The family initially believed his death may have followed a bad reaction from the drugs or an accidental overdose.
Now they're wondering if the underlying heart condition could have interacted with the medication, Don Wagner said.
The coroner "said it wouldn't surprise her if the depressants he was on with an enlarged, inefficient heart could have overwhelmed his system and shut down his heart,'' he said….
Prior posts: 2, 1
A half hour ago, the OC Reg’s Erika I. Ritchie posted an update on the “Paul Wagner” story:
Family: Candidate's son had enlarged heart
Assembly candidate Don Wagner said Tuesday that while results from a coroner's autopsy are still inconclusive, an initial finding revealed that his son, Paul Wagner, who was found dead in his car on Saturday, had a severely enlarged heart.
"They found the heart was enlarged with a circumference of 480 cc when the normal heart is 300cc," Don Wagner said. "They found that to be an anomaly.''
Deputy Coroner Mitchell Sigal said the initial findings from Monday's autopsy were inconclusive and that final results would require more testing, including toxicology results. Sigal declined to release more information.
On Saturday at 9:31 a.m. Newport Beach police found Paul Wagner, 20, dead in his Acura SUV in a parking structure on the Newport Beach peninsula. Initial investigation revealed that Wagner, who worked as a valet supervisor, may have been watching a movie on his laptop while waiting for cars to be parked or picked up. Police found no signs of foul play.
Family members said Wagner was diagnosed as bi-polar and had been on a series of medications. The family initially believed his death may have followed a bad reaction from the drugs or an accidental overdose.
Now they're wondering if the underlying heart condition could have interacted with the medication, Don Wagner said.
The coroner "said it wouldn't surprise her if the depressants he was on with an enlarged, inefficient heart could have overwhelmed his system and shut down his heart,'' he said….
Prior posts: 2, 1
Back to basics—in praise of classical education w/o technical doohickery and reform folderol
Higher education is in a transitional state right now. The big changes that are happening often seem unguided, chaotic, even misguided. Outsiders may see "progress"; insiders—especially the well-educated—see cluelessness and folly.
Here are three recent pieces related to our benighted transition.THREE WISE WOMEN AND A FISH. Stanley Fish’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times (A Classical Education: Back to the Future) discusses three new books about higher education and what it should be. The impressive authors of these books each recommend a classical or traditional education—and seem inclined to dismiss or ignore the new technologies and recent education reform philosophies (stressing endless testing, maximizing idiotically defined “outcomes,” etc.).
Martha Nussbaum, philosopher, classicist, ethicist and law professor, starts from the same place. She critiques the current emphasis on “science and technology” and the “applied skills suited to profit making” and she argues that the “humanistic aspects of science and social science — the imaginative and creative aspect, and the aspect of rigorous critical thought — are . . . losing ground” as the humanities and the arts “are being cut away” and dismissed as “useless frills” in the context of an overriding imperative “to stay competitive in the global market.” The result, she complains, is that “abilities crucial to the health of any democracy” are being lost, especially the ability to “think critically,” the ability, that is, “to probe, to evaluate evidence, to write papers with well-structured arguments, and to analyze the arguments presented to them in other texts.”
. . .
For Nussbaum, human development means the development of the capacity to transcend the local prejudices of one’s immediate (even national) context and become a responsible citizen of the world. Students should be brought “to see themselves as members of a heterogeneous nation . . . and a still more heterogeneous world, and to understand something of this history of the diverse groups that inhabit it.” Developing intelligent world citizenship is an enormous task that can not even begin to be accomplished without the humanities and arts that “cultivate capacities for play and empathy,” encourage thinking that is “flexible, open and creative” and work against the provincialism that too often leads us to see those who are different as demonized others.
. . .
[Diane Ravitch’s] conclusions, backed up by exhaustive research and an encyclopedic knowledge both of the literature and of situations on the ground, are devastating. The mantra of choice produced a “do your own thing” proliferation of educational schemes, “each with its own curriculum, and methods, each with its own private management, all competing for . . . public dollars” rather than laboring to discover “better ways of educating hard-to-educate students.” The emphasis on testing produced students who could “master test taking methods, but not the subject itself,” with the consequence that the progress claimed on the basis of test scores was an “illusion”: “The scores had gone up, but the students were not better educated.” A faith in markets produced gamesmanship, entrepreneurial maneuvering and outright cheating, very little reflection on “what children should know” and very little thought about the nature of the curriculum. [The third author is Leigh A. Bortins.]
DEFENDING THE HUMANITIES: ACCOUNTING FOR THE "BIG SHAGGY." Be sure to check out David Brooks’ brief and eccentric defense of the Humanities (History for Dollars) also in yesterday’s New York Times. Excerpt:
But over the centuries, there have been rare and strange people who possessed the skill of taking the upheavals of thought that emanate from The Big Shaggy and representing them in the form of story, music, myth, painting, liturgy, architecture, sculpture, landscape and speech. These men and women developed languages that help us understand these yearnings and also educate and mold them. They left rich veins of emotional knowledge that are the subjects of the humanities.
The Big Shaggy? Well, read Brooks.
THIS WILL BE YOUR TEXT BOOK; WE ARE THE BORG. See also this peek into one telling difference between traditional “brick and mortar” institutions and the new for-profits: The E-Book Sector (Chronicle of Higher Ed)
…E-textbooks might be the most-talked about and least-used learning tools in traditional higher education. Campus libraries and e-reader manufacturers are betting on electronic learning materials to overtake traditional textbooks in the foreseeable future, but very few students at traditional institutions are currently using e-textbooks, according to recent surveys.
Not so in the world of for-profit online education. Online for-profits such as American Public University System and the University of Phoenix have for years strategically steered students toward e-textbooks in an attempt to shave costs and ensure a more reliable delivery method that, in the context of online education, might seem to make more sense. At Kaplan University's law school, digital texts account for around 80 percent of assigned reading. At Capella University, e-textbooks are an available and accepted option in nearly all 1,250 courses. In for-profit higher education, more than any other sector, the traditional book is becoming obsolete….
One reason, of course, that the for-profits can manage to embrace e-textbooks is their top-down philosophy and reliance on vulnerable adjuncts. They can simply command that instructors use a particular book, an e-book.
And that is that.
Observe our benighted future. Another unpromising, confused unintended experiment.
Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: John Wooden
That's right: John Wooden.
When he died last week at the age of 99, the legendary coach had just finished an essay for Poetry (the nation's oldest and most prestigious journal dedicated to the form) which will appear in the July/August issue.
excerpt:
At UCLA, where I was head coach of men’s varsity basketball for twenty-seven years, poetry was one of my favorite teaching tools. I have loved poems since I was a child, perhaps because my father, Joshua Hugh Wooden, introduced me to literature at an early age—reading to his four sons at night under a coal oil lamp in our Indiana farmhouse: Tennyson, Whitman, Longfellow, Whittier, James Whitcomb Riley, Shakespeare, and more...
...In 1962, UCLA came within a whisker of winning a national championship. A phantom foul called on Walt Hazzard perhaps kept us from the championship game against Ohio State in which we would have been the favorite. Our team had given it everything they had. And been outscored. I reminded them of George Moriarty’s poem:
Who can ask more of a man
than giving all within his span?
Giving all, it seems to me,
is not so far from victory.
A teacher never knows what stays with those he or she is teaching. You do your best using the tools at your disposal. Poetry was one of my many tools. Thus, even though I understood that Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and many others on our teams may have raised their eyebrows at some of my maxims and poetry at the time, things changed as they matured. In fact, when Bill had children of his own, he began writing down some of my maxims on their brown paper lunch bags before they left for school....
To read the rest, click here - or better yet, go out and buy a copy.
John Wooden! In Poetry! Yeah.
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