"Why was a prosecutor terminated for a simple, legitimate inquiry?"

     The Voice of OC has a pdf file of the CCLEA letter requesting an investigation of John Williams' Public Administrator/Public Guardian Office. I've converted it for display below (click on these images to enlarge them).
     It's well worth reading.

Did Spitzer bump into something hinky at Williams’ office?

     Here’s a way curious development. The Voice of OC reports (Police Group Wants Probe of Public Guardian Role in Spitzer Firing) that

     A statewide law enforcement group is calling on state Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate the role Orange County Public Administrator/Guardian John Williams' office in the firing of Todd Spitzer from the district attorney's office.
     …[M]any are questioning William's unusually public role in the firing, which [sic] him sending out a Saturday press release announcing his concerns about Spitzer.
. . .
     The California Coalition of Law Enforcement Associations today wrote to Chief Deputy James Humes at the attorney general's office, asking him to launch a probe that focuses on Williams' office.
     The group is openly questioning whether Spitzer essentially bumped into a major issue and got fired for checking it out.
     "What has transpired in the last week has the real potential of sending a chilling effect to concerned citizens who rely on the public guardian to look out for their rights," said Wayne Quint, who is president of the statewide group representing 80,000 law enforcement officers as well as the local deputy's union, the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs.
     "Our members are deeply concerned that the health, welfare and financial interests of present conservatees and those presently under investigation are in jeopardy," Quint wrote.
. . .

     The coalition is worried about more than a confidentiality agreement, it is worried about a possible conflict of interest because Rackauckas' fiancé is the second-in-command at the public administrator/guardian's office.
     "We cannot refer this case to the District Attorney who clearly has a conflict of interest because of his personal relationship with a high ranking administrator in the public guardian's office and because the District Attorney cannot investigate the propriety of this own conduct in this matter."

     Oh my. I wonder if the CCLEA would risk the embarrassment of causing the AG to look into hinkyness where no hinkyness exists? Perhaps they know something. D'you suppose?
     Oh my!

• Melissa [Fox] on the Community College Crisis (Orange Juice Blog)

Start your week with pain

     If you’d like to start your week with a little pain, check out ORANGE COUNTY’S “MR. REPUBLICAN”, TOM FUENTES, SHARES LEADERSHIP SECRETS AND REVEALS HIS LONG-TIME TIES TO SAN DIEGO.
     It’s mostly about Fuentes’ family history.
     It’s pretty ridiculous, sporting such fawning verbiage as this:

     The guy who has done everying [sic] in politics made each person gathered around him that day feel they were important and worthy of his respect.
     Watching and listening, I saw why Tom Fuentes was/is so successful, and why he still draws a crowd to this day wherever he goes in Republican circles.

Here's more:

The Fuentes Family in early California

     In an interview this week, Mr. Fuentes kindly shared some family history, which helps explains why he is so motivated to build a stronger, freer California. It is a family tradition, and his ties to San Diego go back to 1834. It [?] comes from a journal kept by his great-great-great grandfather:
     “My great great great grandfather Victorian [?] Vega arrived in San Diego on August 14th, 1834, aboard the brigantine Natalia. He was billeted upon arrival and had occasion to make some candy for Pio Pico (the future Governor of California).
     “One dance [?] was presented in the barracks of the Spanish merchant Don Jose Antonie Aguirre, who was married to the daughter of Captain Jose Maria Estudillo. The other dance was at the presidio, in the house of Don Juan Rocha, courtesy of Don Pio Pico.
     “A few days after the festivities, Victoriano left for Mission San Luis Rey to join his family [?]. From there, he traveled north to San Gabriel, and further north to Santa Barbara; eventually all the way to Monterrey by 1835. He worked as a carpenter in the house of the commissioner at the presidio. With the passage of time, he eventually returned south to make a home at Mission San Gabriel in his last years.
     “Our family has the good fortune of having Victoriano’s oral narrative of his life in early California, that all began in San Diego.
     “Every time I visit the place of my ancestors’ first arrival in California, I think how San Diego must have been in those days gone by, and of those early pioneers who each contributed to its development and growth.
     “As he disembarked from the ship Natalia in San Diego, Victoriano Vega was given some printed verses:

“‘Companions, our heavenly blessings, our congratulations
To a peaceful alliance, a lasting wish for peace
‘Companions, brothers and friends; to our victorious wives
Here in this beautiful land and to this fertile soil
We dedicate our lives.’”

     This was the mystical spell California cast on newcomers so long ago, and to those who are perceptive, it still does today. We can be greatful [sic] to Don Victoriano for his dedication and for founding a truly great California family.
     Victoriano Vega must be smiling today as he watches the continuing adventures of his distinguished descendant, Thomas A. Fuentes!

     I don’t get it. If this whole California-Fuentean saga begins with Vega’s arrival in San Diego in 1834, then how can it be that he leaves, a few days after his arrival, to meet his family in Mission San Luis Rey? I guess they arrived, too, but not in San Diego. But that didn’t count as the start of anything, evidently.
     Obviously, Fuentes is proud of his family’s contributions to this thing, the state of California, and its ruthless sproutage amongst the native Americans, most of whom were killed off or pushed into the weeds by various means. “Peaceful alliance” my ass. (I won’t even mention Californians’ conduct re Mexico.)
     That’s some “mystical spell,” ain’t it?

Walking around with "all sorts of unexamined beliefs...that are mistaken"

     It’s an old pattern in education: we embrace unverified (and sometimes debunked) theories, insisting all the while that we are being scientific. Recall the California K-12 community’s disastrous embrace of the “whole language” reading teaching method or its embrace of the goofy notion that student “self-esteem” is the key to success in life and study. That latter idea probably helped mess some of those kids up. They act like lazy assholes and then they expect to get a prize.
     Well, here we go again.

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits (New York Times)

     Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).
     And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.
     Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.
     Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
     The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.
     For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.
     “We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
     Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
. . .

My niece Natalie visited on Sunday

     But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
     The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
. . .
     Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.
. . .
     Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.
     “With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington Universityin St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
     When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.

Her twin sister, Catherine, visited too

     No one knows for sure why. It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.
     “The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said [Williams College’s] Dr. [Nate] Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
     That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
. . .
     “Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
     Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget….

Annie with all the kids: Catherine, Sarah, Natalie, and Adam