Confusing and jargony "criteria" (as transparent as a bowl of sludge)

Delightfully clear

     Yesterday, denizens of Irvine Valley College received an email from campus leadership, announcing an “all-campus meeting to discuss [the] current status of the educational and facilities master plan” (i.e., the plan for, among other things, construction of new buildings on the campus).
     The meeting is scheduled for noon next Monday, in the middle of teaching “prime time” at the college.
     This means that many of us—including me—can’t attend or can only attend part of the meeting.
     The email came with two attachments, including “The 2011 Prioritization Criteria.”
     “These two documents,” we’re told, “are the result of numerous hours of interviews, open meetings and discussions, and significant amounts of data gathering and analysis.” How all this confabulation produced these documents is not explained. My guess: the gkk team relied heavily on intuition. And hallucinogens. And the Lexicon of Jackasses.
     “The goal of this open meeting,” we’re told, “is to enable faculty, staff and students to provide input prior to ‘pouring the concrete.’”
     Below are the “criteria.” Evidently, the author(s) of these criteria have not yet heard that, in written expression at the college level, clarity is a virtue and jargon should be kept to a minimum. An abundance of jargon usually indicates that the author has disguised from himself a failure to have anything to say.
     You try to make sense of this blather:

Click on graphic to enlarge it.

"Hey fellas, here's where they'll put that 'benefit to a student centered culture' and 'pedestrian orientation.'"

Grizzled Adamsophile dances with 11-year-old Abigail at Nixon Library; Lincoln zombie hands toddler a dead fish

"Gosh, I feel as though I'm recreating history, Abby" said the old gent. 

Resurrected presidents, first ladies appear at Nixon Library (OC Reg)

"That's not a piece of me," noted Abe. "Go ahead and eat it!"

As always, members of the Nixon Foundation were on hand to provide the needed "balance."

The latest re master planning; American ignorance

A recent post with info people need:

 Master Planning at Irvine Valley College: correspondences (Saturday)

MORE ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE AMERICAN VOTER:

1. COWARDLY "LEADER" REFUSES TO LEAD. A special challenge for you Birthers out there. Please explain why Republican leader Boehner is convinced that Obama is a U.S. citizen. Evidently, he's no birther. Or is his stated position part of a pro-Obama conspiracy? How does the conspiracy work exactly? Or maybe he's "going along" with a "lie" for some reason consistent with understanding "the truth." Please spell out the reasons.

2. GENERAL POLITICAL IGNORANCE. Americans cannot even name the leaders of their own government. Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Fewer than half of Americans could tell you her name during the length of her entire tenure. William Rehnquist was chief justice of the Supreme Court. Just 40 percent of Americans ever knew his name (and only 30 percent could tell you that he was a conservative). Going into the First Gulf War, just 15 percent could identify Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense. In 2007, in the fifth year of the Iraq War, only 21 percent could name the secretary of defense, Robert Gates. Most Americans cannot name their own member of Congress or their senators.

—From Rick Schenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter

Niece Natalie, Saturday night.
Natalie doesn't believe in witches.

3. 20% BELIEVE IN "WITCHES."According to a section of the [National Science Board] report on pseudoscience, only around 14 percent of Americans believed in witches in 1990, according to a Gallup poll. Witches rallied for a decade, convincing over a quarter of Americans of their existence by 2001, before about 4 percent of those reneged, putting the believers at just over 20 percent in 2005.

—American Ignorance (Inside Higher Ed, 2006)

4. WHAT IS MOST TROUBLING. Long-time readers of DtB know that we have long chronicled the ignorance of Americans and where that ignorance predominates (viz., toward the right & toward the religious−roughly, toward the Tea Partiers and the so-called "Republican base").
   What is most troubling about these trends is the apparent fact that many Americans, especially on the right, now seem incapable of distinguishing reliable from unreliable sources.


   Birthers: How does Senator McCain fit into your Weltanschauung? Why does he believe that Obama is a citizen? Is he a traitor? A dupe? A liar? Please explain.

5. SO SAYS THE NATIONAL REVIEW. Over the weekend David Gregory asked Speaker Boehner…whether he would “stand up” to the birthers’ “ignorance” beyond saying that he believes Obama to be a Christian and a citizen. I am fairly certain that these Republican leaders are not trying to advance birtherism surreptitiously. They just don’t want to have to say that a large portion of the Republican base is evil or crazy. And they resent the fact that they’re asked these questions when Nancy Pelosi was never asked if she thought Cindy Sheehan was a nut (for example). ¶ But isn’t there a simple solution here? Some of the birthers clearly are crazy. But the millions of Americans who think Obama is a Muslim, for example, are just misinformed, misled by his name, aspects of his background, and the enigmatic profile he has cultivated. So why not say something like this? “David, I have already said that I think questioning Obama’s religion and citizenship is deeply misguided. I disagree with it. It’s no part of my critique of Obama’s administration. I don’t think everyone who holds these views is malicious or nuts. A lot of people hold a lot of mistaken views. You know, back in 2008, a lot of Americans thought Obama was a moderate!”

—From the National Review Online (Feb. 14)