Mad Max

Our Friend David has sent us new pics of young Maximilian.

1. Here we have Max in the kitchen with seashells.

2. Evidently, young Max sometimes finds it necessary to rest on the rug.

3. Here we catch Maximilian, tiring of the photoshoot.

Loyalty oath, veterans memorial

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed

The California attorney general’s office on Tuesday issued a letter backing the way California State University East Bay fired an instructor who wanted to modify the loyalty oath required of all state employees. Cal State has been much criticized by faculty and employee groups for its decision to dismiss Marianne Kearney-Brown, who tried to insert the word “nonviolently” before a pledge of support for the U.S. Constitution. Many Cal State employees — including some posting comments at Inside Higher Ed — have said that they made similar changes in the past, and did not get fired as a result. But a letter to Cal State from Jacob A. Appelsmith, senior assistant attorney general, released by East Bay Tuesday, said that Kearney-Brown’s situation was handled correctly. Appelsmith noted that the oath does not require anyone to commit a violent act. He said that Kearney-Brown appeared to be acting “in good faith,” but said that court decisions backed a strict interpretation of the oath requirement. Allowing Kearney-Brown to modify the oath would “introduce uncertainty and equivocation,” he wrote. For these reasons, he said, Cal State acted “appropriately in requiring Ms. Kearney-Brown to sign the oath as written.”

From yesterday’s OC Reg: Saddleback College breaks ground on veterans' memorial:

.....Saddleback College breaks ground Wednesday on a memorial to honor the college's and city's veterans.
.....The event begins with four veterans discussing their experiences in the attack on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp and combat in the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
.....The concrete and ceramic memorial has been in various stages of development since 2005, when college administrators began considering ways to leave a mark on the city. When the idea for a veterans memorial surfaced, administrators formed a committee of veterans to consult for different designs.
.....When the two designers, Richard White, chair of Saddleback College's art department, and Fred Olsen, an associate professor, presented the design to the committee, there was a “silent moment” of approval among the veterans, said Saddleback College President Richard McCullough.
.....“The general consensus of the committee was that's it,” he said.
.....White and Olsen sculpted a model of the memorial using the “fire in place” technique, which allows them to create large, hollow pieces of ceramic that would not fit in a traditional kiln. McCullough said the men are two of the few artists who know how to use the technique, which made the design unique to Saddleback College.
.....“We have the expertise here,” he said. “We didn't want to bring something in that somebody else built; we wanted to design it ourselves.”
.....White said he and Olsen designed the memorial to be interactive, with a seating area and a space for visitors to walk through. He said he hoped the memorial would reflect the relationship between the public and the military, which he said has been much more positive during the Iraq war than it was during the Vietnam war.
....."Even though this war is unpopular, everybody sees that the soldiers are serving us, and they’re protecting us," he said.
.....Several cities and service organizations have donated to the memorial, which will cost about $250,000 and is slated to open next fall.
.....The veterans forum will take place at noon in room 212 of the Student Services Center of Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway. The groundbreaking is at 1 p.m. outside the Administration and Governance building. Parking will be free across campus all day.

You are the master of nothing

CONTRIBUTED BY MR. EUGENE DEBS
.....A minor presidential-race controversy that has been making the rounds lately is McCain's endorsement by John Hagee, a megachurch pastor out of San Antonio, Texas. This has struck a dusty chord with me; once upon a time, I used to watch televangelists compulsively, and remember the man well—if not fondly—from almost ten years ago, well before his current mainstream-media notoriety.
.....Hagee's recent fame has been headlined by the foreign-policy implication of his theology; briefly, he believes that only Jesus can make peace in the Mideast. Therefore, believers are obliged to actively strive for the opposite (i.e. war without end). Also, unlike most evangelicals, he opposes efforts to proselytize Jews, as their persistence in their current hellbound state is a necessary component in the convoluted structure of his eschatology (basically, you can't convert and save the Jews and have yourself your Apocalypse, any more than you can have your cake and eat it too).
.....Oddly enough, this somewhat Ahmadinejadian "throw the Jews under the bus so the rest of us can groove with J.C." viewpoint passes for a pro-Israeli position these days, but I digress. The enduring memory I have of the man is not of poisonous policy stances, but something very different, and quite less grand and geopolitical in nature; a single moment in a single sermon. The American Prospect quotes a snippet from that very sermon (here), but it does not do justice to the scene—I remember that particular broadcast very well, and a simple transcript loses virtually all the atmosphere:

.....A short, rotund, porcine man (still, though he has lost much weight), with a head like an underinflated basketball and little sunken pig eyes, Hagee speaks in the cadences of a carnival barker; key words are punctuated with a wild increase in shrillness and volume; every "payoff" sentence ends with a segue into an ascending-register, jowl-shaking shriek. The subject that day was human freedom; Hagee was agin' it. His decoy was a line from 19th century poet William Ernest Henley, which he misattributed (twice, to "Secular Humanism" and to Walt Whitman), mincing in an effete, nasal, whiny falsetto: "'I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.'" Pausing a moment for a derisive snort, he drew himself up, and in his own voice sneered contemptuously, "Secular humanism says man is the master of his fate. What nonsense that is. You can't guarantee your next breath. Only God can give you life." Hagee drew in a deep breath, a stubby finger stuck out and sweeping the auditorium triumphantly as he thundered: "You are the master of nothing! There is one master, and he is King Jay-sus! And there is no other!"
.....And the audience rose to their feet and applauded. Laughing. Uproariously. As though the thought vastly delighted them. The camera panned the pews; there were old couples, families, children in their Sunday best, all grinning widely, enormously pleased at the master-stroke their pastor had laid upon the wicked humanists. And I—who had in the past been often left angry or repelled or even dismayed by the sort of things I heard from these quarters—I found myself surprised to be simply ...sad.
.....It's hard to isolate the precise utterly demoralizing quality about the utter, vacant happiness, the casual self-debasement of the human spirit on display; but it struck a deep well of melancholy within me. Even the Communists—or the Nazis, if you will forgive me for Godwinizing myself—never quite managed, in seven decades of repressive conformism and gunpoint-enforced groupthink, to pull off the trick of telling people that they were nothing more than chattel and have them actually laugh and applaud them for it!

Tagged as E by Z

.....Evidently, DISSENT the BLOG has been “tagged” as excellent by the inimitable Professor Zero.
.....I’m not sure what that means, but Rebel Girl assures me that it is a very good thing, especially coming from Z.

.....Writes Prof Z:

Dissent - the best of academic blogs, the Bodhisattva. By Chunk Wheeler, Rebel Girl, Red Emma, and Sunny Girl, a cat.

.....I informed Sunny. She was manifestly aloofitudinal.

—Which reminds me, somehow, of my visit with my niece yesterday. She is five years old. At one point, she walked up to me, singing. It was an old John Lennon tune! She sang

All we are saying
is give pizza a chance

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "my shining loaf of quietness"

~
Today's poem comes from Peter Everwine, who has shared the red dust of the San Joaquin Valley for years with poet Philip Levine at Fresno State.

The loaves are courtesy of my own Sunday: 3 cups of lukewarm water, salt, a tablespoon and a half of yeast, 6 and half cups flour. One four or five hour rise, one 40 minute rest. 30 minutes in a hot oven with steam.

Night

In the lamplight falling
on the white tablecloth
my plate,
my shining loaf of quietness.

I sit down.
through the open door
all the absent I love enter
and we eat.

Against faith & other forms of irrationality: interview with Alan Sokal

Guardian UK has a fine 30-minute interview with Alan Sokal, the physicist and author most famous for his 1996 postmodernist hoax. Check it out: CLICK HERE. (Luddites: don't forget to click on the "play" button.)

Among the topics:

The hoax: parody of post-Modern science criticism
Postmodern writers vs. scientists & philosophers
The evidence-based way of thinking
The war on science (Bush)
Well-tested vs. cutting-edge science
Homeopathy & alternative medicines
Disregard for evidence: the Iraq war
Society’s deference to faith
The importance of evidence

The adventures of Sunny Girl

For animal lovers only.

Sunny Girl goes to the vet and she doesn't like it much.
(Technical problems have been overcome.)



Diagnosed with "nonspecific crapulence."