A coloring book for the kiddies

Click on graphic to see the lurid details

2003: Irvine Valley College administrator Dennis White declares that faculty may not discuss the Iraq war in the classroom. "After all," he says, "this is America, where students are, like, customers or something."

Check out the beast's expression.
We wanted to get the details right.

2009: County officials announce that, yes, OC Public Administrator/Guardian John S. Williams is "seriously, inveterately stupid," but that he is an "elected official nevertheless." Meanwhile, Williams is at a conference "for the college district" at an expensive hotel in Orlando.

1962: future SOCCCD trustee and 70th District Assemblyman Don P. Wagner beats up a Romper Room colleague who makes the mistake of confiding to Donny that he wants to be a "librarian" when he grows up. After delivering the beating, Wagner proudly poses for this photo.

1998: Irvine Valley College President Raghu P. Mathur declares the college a "no free speech" zone. Many lawsuits follow. The district loses all of them. In the spring of 2000, Mathur and County GOP chief Tom Fuentes make an infernal secret pact and plot the future of the SOCCCD. By 2008, their plan disintegrates and, by 2010, Mathur is sent packing. Fuentes remains, evidently serving no purpose beyond emitting sulphur.

2005: SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes acknowledges that he has long been assisted in his endeavors by Satan. For his part, Satan holds a press conference in which he declares that, though he has long used Fuentes as a "talent scout,"  he "will have nothing further to do with that duplicitous bastard." The Lord, too, announces a press conference but then He suddenly cancels.

2010: OC Treasurer candidate Dave Lang is endorsed by former GOP Big Cheese Tom Fuentes. He spends over $100K of his own money. He receives 12 votes. Fuentes is seen, snickering, emitting sulphereous vapors.

Washington Phillips sings "I had a good father and mother" (1929)

To learn more about Phillips and his peculiar instrument, read Exhuming the Legend of Washington Phillips by Michael Corcoran

Read also Washington Phillips CD study (Yazoo Records), by Gregg Miner

See also fretless zithers

Phillips, 1928

Phillips, 1950

“I got a A.”

A Quest to Explain What Grades Really Mean (New York Times)

     It could be a Zen koan: if everybody in the class gets an A, what does an A mean?
     The answer: Not what it should, says Andrew Perrin, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “An A should mean outstanding work; it should not be the default grade,” Mr. Perrin said. “If everyone gets an A for adequate completion of tasks, it cripples our ability to recognize exemplary scholarship.”
     As part of the university’s long effort to clarify what grades really mean, Mr. Perrin now leads a committee that is working with the registrar on plans to add extra information — probably median grades, and perhaps more — to transcripts. In addition, they expect to post further statistics providing context online and give instructors data on how their grading compares with their colleagues’.
     “It’s going to be modest and nowhere near enough to correct the problems,” Mr. Perrin said. “But it’s our judgment that it’s the best we can do now.”
     With college grades creeping ever higher, a few universities have taken direct action against grade inflation. Most notably, Princeton adopted guidelines in 2004 providing that no more than 35 percent of undergraduate grades should be A’s, a policy that remains controversial on campus.
     Others have taken a less direct approach, leaving instructors free to award whatever grades they like but expanding their transcripts to include information giving graduate schools and employers a fuller picture of what the grades mean.
. . .
     Especially in hard economic times, students worry that professors who are stingy with the A’s will leave them at a disadvantage in graduate school admissions and employment. No wonder, then, that many students visit Web sites like RateMyProfessors.com when registering, perhaps to help them avoid tough graders.
. . .
     Studies of grade inflation have found that private universities generally give higher grades than public ones, and that humanities courses award higher grades than science and math classes.
. . .
     “Anything that uses G.P.A is unfair, because a given student can be penalized or rewarded in grading just because of the mix of professors or the strength of the schedule,” Mr. Perrin said. “Some instructors grade harder than others. Some courses are harder than others, and some departments are harder than others.”….