What's on tap for tomorrow's board meeting?

.....The “agenda outline” for tomorrow’s (June 24) meeting of the South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees has now been posted (here (pdf)).
.....The closed session starts at 5:00 p.m.
.....Under "public employee discipline/dismissal/release," the closed session agenda lists four “cases.”
.....It also lists a single “appointment”: “President, Saddleback College.” Does this mean that they’ve hired someone? Maybe so. (Or maybe Chancellor Raghu Mathur is allowing for the mere possibility. Dunno.)
.....There’s the usual union, ATEP, and legal stuff.

OPEN SESSION:

.....The open session is set to start at 6:30.
.....As usual, after some "resolutions," members of the public will be given an opportunity to address the board.
.....Why doncha show up and just point and scream like Donald Sutherland (or, better, Brooke Adams) did at the end of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? They'll let you do it for three whole minutes.

Donald Sutherland: Invasion of the Body Snatchers


.....Among the “consent calendar” items is this:

5.18 SOCCCD: Budget Amendment: Adopt Resolution No. 08-19 to Amend 2007-2008 Restricted General and Community Education Funds : Adopt resolution.

.....—As usual, the public is left sans clue as to what that’s about. I don’t think Raghu fully grasps the spirit of the Ralph M. Brown Act.

Among “general action items”:

6.1 SOCCCD: District Mission and Vision Statements and District-wide Goals 2008-09 (approval)

.....—Have you ever read this stuff? This kind of pseudo-erudite writing—Mathur's kind of shit-hackery—suggests a complete failure to grasp the notion that writing is meant to communicate something. (Naturally, the “agenda outline” does not actually provide the statements. Thanks again, Democracy Boy.)

6.3 SOCCCD: Five Year Construction Plan 2010/11 to 2014/15

6.4 SOCCCD: ATEP: Submittal of Long Range Plan to the City

.....—Looks like something’s brewin’, ATEPwise.

Item 6.9 (Academic Personnel Actions) includes “authorization to establish and announce a faculty position.” Don't know what that's about.

.....I’m gonna miss this meeting. I’ve got tickets to see Alison Krauss and Robert Plant at the Greek. Can somebody please cover for me?
.....Don't all volunteer at once.

T-Bone Burnett, Alison Krauss, & Robert Plant

Some daffy news

.....The two items of news provided below are odd. The first story concerns the U of California's evident intention to disobey a (soon-to-be) new state law designed to protect free-speech minded advisors to school journalism/newspaper programs. (They tend to get fired. Remember Saddleback College's Kathleen Dorantes?)
.....The second story concerns Philadelphia's plan to honor Charles Darwin (as we approach the 150th year since the publication of Origin of Species). That's great, but an organizer of that effort—a Dr. Janet Monge—is quoted (by the New York Times) as saying things that strike me as quite daffy. Judge for yourself.

.....NOPE, WE WON'T BE OBEYING THAT LAW. In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed, we learn of a very odd conflict between California legislators and the University of California: Above the Law?:

.....Student newspaper advisers are something of an endangered species these days. They often get caught in the middle when administrators and student journalists clash over content, and in more than a few cases on college campuses in recent years, advisers …have found themselves losing their jobs….
…
.....It was with several recent such controversies in mind, and numerous instances of censorship at high schools in California, that the state’s Legislature overwhelmingly approved legislation this month that would prohibit a college or school district from firing, suspending or otherwise retaliating against an employee for acting to protect a student’s free speech. Last week, with the measure, SB 1370, sailing for passage and a trip to the governor’s office for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hoped-for signature, the University of California quietly revealed its opposition to the bill.
.....In a letter to State Sen. Leland Yee, the legislation’s sponsor, a lobbyist for the university system “respectfully” warned Yee that the university did not expect to abide by the requirement if it was enacted. “The University of California must maintain its ability to correct situations in which a member of its teaching corps or a University employee has failed to comply with academic teaching standards, violated UC policies, broken rules or laws, or misused University resources.” wrote Happy Chastain, senior legislative director for state government relations in the UC president’s office. “Under the provisions of SB 1370, UC is concerned that its ability to act in such circumstances would be restricted and expose the University to frivolous and unwarranted litigation.”
.....The last-minute opposition from UC officials infuriated Yee and other supporters of the bill. Not only did they challenge the university’s logic for fighting the measure, disputing the suggestion that it would restrict its institutions’ ability to punish faculty members who teach inappropriate material in the classroom; more broadly, they also expressed surprise that the university could assert the right not to abide by the law.
…
.....SB 1370 is only the latest piece of legislation aimed at ensuring the speech rights of student journalists. At the core of the effort is 1992’s California Education Code Section 66301, broadly protected the right of college students not to be punished solely “on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication that, when engaged in outside a campus of those institutions, is protected from governmental restriction by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution” or California’s own Constitution.
.....In 2006, the California Legislature approved a measure (AB 2581) sponsored by Senator Yee that, in the wake of 2005’s controversial Hosty v. Carter decision, prohibited colleges in the state from censoring student newspapers or exercising “prior restraint” of student speech or the student press.
.....The reason Yee followed up with the pending legislation, SB 1370, said [Adam] Keigwin, his aide, is because campus media advisers are often thrust into the position of defending (or not defending) the student journalists whose work they oversee. If campus administrators can readily dismiss a faculty or staff member who stands up for student journalists, and replace him or her with someone who won’t, Yee asserts, the 2006 legislation can be seriously undermined.
.....“Since administrators are unable [under AB2851] to exercise prior restraint with regard to a student publication, they lean on advisers to do what they legally cannot,” said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which supports the Yee measure. “When advisers refuse, they are punished because administrators know they will face no legal consequences. SB 1370 is necessary to close this gaping loophole in the law.”
…
.....Last Monday, on the day that the state Assembly approved Yee’s legislation, the University of California — for the first time, according to aides to Yee — expressed its opposition to the measure. In the letter to Yee, Chastain noted that the university “feels strongly about academic and speech freedoms,” but argued that existing laws and university policies “already afford substantial freedom of speech protections for students and faculty.” The fact that the issue raised by the proposed legislation may not be an issue at UC, Chastain suggests, is “evidenced, in part, by our inability to identify a single example of the University of California acting to discipline employees for supporting the free speech of University students.”
…
.....What would happen, the university suggested, if “during delivery of a course in mathematics, a student uses class time to promote opinions unrelated to mathematics or the course materials, and ... the instructor of record not only allows this behavior to persist, but also reinforces the student’s beliefs in class.” In such a case, in which “the course is not being taught according to the curriculum approved by the University,” Chastain wrote, UC must retain “the right to take appropriate measures to ensure that our standards and policies are upheld.”
.....Supporters of the media adviser law were surprised by the last-minute nature of the university’s opposition ("It came totally out of the blue,” said Keigwin, “on the day after it passed the second house — that’s just not the way you do things") and by some of its assertions. They argued, for instance, that the example cited in Chastain’s letter is an illegitimate comparison, because the university would have every right to punish a faculty member who is not teaching the curriculum.
.....“The letter cites as a hypothetical example a math instructor who allowed a student to promote opinions unrelated to the subject during class time, suggesting that under the law, the university would be prohibited from punishing the teacher for tolerating the disruptive student speech,” [Mark] Goodman, the Kent State ... [Chair of Scholastic Journalism], wrote in a post on the blog of the Center for Scholastic Journalism. “Of course, the letter never explains why the University believes that off-topic student speech in the classroom would be protected by the law in the first place, a requirement for the university employee protections of the bill to come into play.”
.....In addition, just because UC has not punished a media adviser or other employee for protecting the free speech rights of students does not mean that university employees do not feel constrained and do not need protection, said Keigwin, the Yee spokesman. The Student Press Law Center has received numerous complaints in recent years about free speech being impaired at UC campuses, and since Yee introduced his bill, his office has received complaints about as many as a dozen cases “where the adviser felt some pressure to steer the paper in a certain way,” said Keigwin. “Speech has still been squelced at the college level.”
.....More fundamentally, Goodman and others are perplexed by the university’s assertion that it would not be obliged to abide by SB 1370 should it become law. In an e-mail message late Sunday, a UC spokesman, Brad Hayward, said that the university’s Constitutional status gives it “discretion in implementing state law.... In this particular case, the bill proposes to amend Section 66301 of the California Education Code, which is within Part 40 of the Education Code. Another section of Part 40, Section 67400, states, “No provision of [Part 40] shall apply to the University of California except to the extent that the Regents of the University of California, by appropriate resolution, make that provision applicable.”
.....In this case, Hayward and Chastain warn, the regents do not plan to let the media adviser provision apply if it should become law.
.....How is it that the university sees itself as not being subject to the media advisers’ legislation but bound, presumably, by the underlying free speech legislation on which it is based? Goodman asked. “I don’t see a legal distinction between one and the other. Why do they think this one is problematic when the underlying statute is not?”….

.....PHILADELPHIA TO HONOR DARWIN. In this morning’s New York Times: Philadelphia Set to Honor Darwin and Evolution:

.....Nine academic, scientific and cultural institutions around the city are holding a Year of Evolution, a series of exhibitions, seminars and lectures to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin next February, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, “The Origin of Species.”
.....Events will include a talk by John E. Jones III, a federal judge who ruled in 2005 that teaching intelligent design — the belief that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must be the work of a higher power rather than of evolution — in public school science classes was unconstitutional.
.....The intent of the citywide event, said Janet M. Monge, one of the organizers, is to increase public understanding of evolution and science in general at a time when polls show that a majority of Americans believe God created man in his present form and that the number of people who accept the evolutionary model of human origins is declining.
.....“The strengths and weaknesses of evolution are the strengths and weaknesses of science,” said Dr. Monge, the curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. “You don’t get answers.” [?]
.....She said the Philadelphia events were also intended to encourage people to consider the evolutionary alternative to the biblical account of the origins of man, as represented by the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a $35 million institution that has attracted more than 400,000 visitors since it opened in May 2007.
.....Ken Ham, the president of the Creation Museum, said he expected to see more pro-evolution events as the Darwin anniversary approaches. Mr. Ham said that in response his museum was planning its own exhibits on the origins of life.
.....“The culture war is definitely heating up,” he said.
…
.....Creationists and their allies in the intelligent design movement suffered a setback when Judge Jones rejected a plan by the school board in Dover, Pa., to teach their ideas. Judge Jones sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and others who sued the school board, arguing that intelligent design was a religious rather than scientific concept and had no place in science classes….

.....I do not object to Monge's statement (according to the Times) that “The strengths and weaknesses of evolution are the strengths and weaknesses of science.” That makes sense. But she is also quoted as saying, "You don’t get answers.”
.....In the sciences?
.....I just don't understand that remark. It is certainly true that scientific theories do not answer all questions that one might have. This is perfectly understood by scientists. But one would never express this truism by saying that science provides no answers.
.....Perhaps the point is that scientific theories are never proved in a strong, deductive sense. A good theory, scientists tell us, is highly probable, not proved. ("You can disprove a theory, but you can't prove one," scientists often say.) But that means that science at times provides highly probable answers. That is, it provides answers.
.....Also (but less worrisome), why does Monge elevate Creationism as she seems to, for she describes evolution as the "alternative" view to Creationism. But surely the (at most) "alternative" view is Creationism, not Evolution. Backed by overwhelming evidence and reasons, scientists teach that evolution occurs—largely through the mechanism of Darwinian natural selection—and this explains much about what we observe in the natural world. People who fail to understand the standards of science (e.g., the importance of simplicity, fruitfulness, predictive power, etc.) might suppose that Creationism offers a good alternative explanation of the facts. Well, yes, it is a kind of alternative theory that in some sense can explain the facts. But, if so, it is also a very poor theory (e.g., it falsely implies or holds that the Earth is but a few thousand years old; it suggests that organisms have no design flaws—a perfect designer will produce a perfect design—but plainly some do). More importantly, it is decidedly inferior to "evolutionary" theory as it is now understood. (Again, think of simplicity, predictive power.)
.....Evolution is the probable truth about things. Creationism is the wacky "alternative" view. In truth, even calling it an "alternative" theory elevates it groundlessly. It's an alternative scientific theory like homeopathy is an "alternative" medicine. That is, it's an alternative only among the ignorant or goofy.
.....My main beef, though, is with the "don't get answers" malarkey. Maybe the reporter screwed up. Somebody sure did.

WHITE SHARK. This was posted at the OC Reg just a couple of hours ago: Large great white shark follows Outriggers about a mile offshore in Laguna. Crazy, man.

.....Sunny says "hey."

Yes, we have no agendas

•.....CHANNEL ISLANDS. On Friday, I briefly described tiny Santa Barbara Island, among the Channel Islands off of the So. Cal coast. As it turns out (as one reader informed me), this weekend, the LA Times has a lengthy piece on the Channel Islands: The Channel Islands: Southern California's offshore Eden.
.....Here’s what it has to say about Santa Barbara (and San Miguel, pictured at left and below):

.....Caves are also a draw on tiny Santa Barbara Island, and a beautiful beach is a hallmark of San Miguel, but both are so far out that you really have to work to get there, which is why they're the least-visited in the park.
.....Island Packers schedules a few trips to each annually, mainly in the summer. But sea and weather conditions often cause these to be canceled. I finally reached Santa Barbara on a beautiful day in April, when conditions were ideal. Rough weather last winter ripped out part of the pier, so visitors have to land by skiff on a rocky ledge. It would be treacherous in anything other than totally calm sea conditions.
.....The island is only a mile square, so hiking it is a breeze. And the ocean view is spectacular. Rocky coves are filled with barking sea lions and clear blue water that's reminiscent of the sea color in the Caribbean or the South Pacific. A tiny campground sits on an unprotected bluff.
.....Sea conditions were not as ideal in late May, when I joined a group of campers headed for San Miguel, 64 miles west of the mainland. Twelve-foot seas made the four-hour journey uncomfortable for many of those on board, as the Island Packers' 64-foot power catamaran lurched up and down through huge waves. I loved it, but I kept my views to myself and cheered only inwardly, out of respect for my seasick companions.
.....Luckily, the weather was better on San Miguel. It offers good hiking and, of course, lots of solitude.

•.....RECALL ELECTION. Meanwhile, this weekend, the OC Register previews this week’s Capistrano Unified recall election. The article mentions The Education Alliance, a group to which I referred recently (some of our SOCCCD trustees have links to EA; EA has associations with Howard Ahmanson, Jr.): CUSD showdown in Tuesday's school board recall election:

.....Anti-recall leaders have focused their message on the Recall Committee's link to the Tustin-based Education Alliance, a political action committee that gave $22,000 to the recall and its candidates during the 2006 election. The self-described "back-to-basics" group opposes health clinics and bilingual education in schools, advocates for school voucher programs, and thinks teacher unions wield too much power.
.....The recall committee and the "reform" trustees say they've welcomed the Education Alliance's donations, but that their views aren't in line with the alliance's.

•.....NO AGENDA OUTLINE? Oddly, at the SOCCCD website, no agenda for Tuesday’s board meeting has yet been posted (as of 11:00 a.m.). What’s up with that? Democrats (with the small "d") should be plenty annoyed. How are we supposed to keep track of what our government representatives are up to, if we've gotta go to so much trouble just to see meeting agendas? Tell me that!

UPDATE (Monday, 8:30 p.m.): at noon today, the district still had not posted the "agenda outline" for the Tuesday board meeting. I just looked and the outline is at long last posted: here (it's a pdf file).

“Üye olmak için tıklayın,” we’re told

.....Have you seen the South Orange County Community College District website lately? Nowadays, there, one finds a “video welcome” by Chancellor Mathur in a section entitled “What’s New?”
.....Mathur’s performance on this video is, as usual, wooden, but it is sure to please his fans, namely, Mathur. All others will be consternated and stupefied.
.....Listed among what is "new" are five things:

• IVC Performing Arts Center
• SC Veterans Memorial Project
• ATEP Campus Opens in Tustin
• Annual Report Showcasing Technology
• 2008 Commencement Photo Essay

.....Not much of this is new, of course. I clicked on the first link—IVC’s Performing Arts Center (PAC)—and that brought me to a pleasant-looking blog entitled "IVC Performing Arts" that appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with the IVC performing arts or the IVC PAC. It does, however, appear to be new.
.....The blog comprises seven increasingly badly-written movie reviews of popular films: Iron Man, Sex and the City, The Incredible Hulk, etc. The writing is unsophisticated. Concerning “Iron Man,” we’re told that “the Iron Man costume was kicking major ass.”
.....Then there's the blog's blogroll, which lists four sites, none of them making the slightest sense. The “forum” is indeed a forum. Unfortunately, it is in Turkish. Really.
.....“Üye olmak için tıklayın,” we’re told.
.....Another blog on the blogroll is labeled “ferrari [sic] pictures.” I clicked it, and that took me to a blog called “Freak Cars,” which presents photos of exotic sports cars, including Alfa Romeos, VWs, and Bugattis.
.....No Ferraris.

[UPDATE: Rebel Girl informs me that, today {Monday}, the above problems have been ironed out. Today, upon clicking the district website's IVC Performing Arts Center link, one is actually taken to a site about the IVC Performing Arts Center. Those, however, who wish to stroll down Memory Lane can return to that odd, Turk-friendly, Ferrari- and film-loving blog—still entitled "IVC Performing Arts"—by clicking here. ]

.....The “Veterans Memorial” link is a Saddleback College page that lists seven links (in English!) about the memorial, including one called “testimonials.” Police Chief Harry Parmer “testifies” as follows: “That this memorial to veterans will be displayed at an institution of higher learning is precedent setting.”

.....The ATEP link is unremarkable (and 8 months old). It is sad to see Bob Kopecky referred to as the Park Ranger, er, Provost, a title that he has now shed.

.....The technology “report” is actually a glossy and expensive pamphlet packed with colorful whiz-bangery. Unfortunately, it begins with Mathur's mug plus a quotation: “Change is becoming a constant in American society…. Our three campuses are advancing change….”
.....Advancing change? Mathur's an idiot.

.....Still, the pamphlet is impressive. The “District at a Glance” pages (20-23) are especially interesting. I’ve included some of the charts and graphs here.
.....What’s with the 60/40 ratio of women to men? Is this a trend?

As you can see, the "ethnicity" of IVC students is 26% Asian and 4% Middle Eastern. This suggests, to me at least, that roughly 30% of IVC students would likely find the distinctly Judeo-Christian prayers offered by some of our trustees at district and college events to be, well, decidedly otherly.
.....That would be fine, I guess, if some of their faiths (Islam, Buddhism, etc.), along with the perspective of atheists and agnostics ("Let's have a moment of quiet desperation, shall we?"), got some play too. But that doesn't happen, now does it?
.....Nope.

Santa Barbara Island

Occasionally, Rebel Girl and her crew manage to get away from it all, and they usually find special places to get away to.

Yesterday, they took a boat from the lovely city of Santa Barbara to the even more lovely island of the same name.


There's evidence that Native Americans visited the island, though they did not live on it, owing to its lack of drinking water.



According to Wikipedia, "the island was named by Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino, who visited the island on December 4, 1602, the feast day dedicated to Santa Barbara." During WW II, the Navy used it as a lookout station.

It’s way out there—about 40 miles. It’s small—last year, Limber Lou proudly hiked clean around it. There’s no potable water—they’ve got to carry it in.

They love it.

Stoning gay people to death not immoral? The money man behind the "Protect Marriage Act"

.....As Dissent readers know, OC resident Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., is a major funder of right-wing religious causes—creationism, establishing a Christian state, keeping gays down, etc.
.....And he has connections to our right-wing crew in the South Orange County Community College District. He was the key funder of Tustin’s Education Alliance, an organization with which some of our trustees (and our Chancellor) have recently associated and on whose board (SOCCCD trustee Pres) Don Wagner currently sits.
.....Further, he’s a close pal of—you guessed it—Trustee, and former chair of the OC GOP, Tom “Prince of Darkness” Fuentes.
.....Well, Ahmanson is the subject of a Gustavo Arellano’s article in today’s OC Weekly: OC FUNDIE FUNDER GIVES MONEY TO WACKY REEPS, HOMO-HATERS—AND LOU CORREA?!.
.....Some excerpts:

.....The most influential Orange County man you've never heard of is undoubtedly Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., heir to the Home Savings … fortune. He rarely makes public appearances due to suffering from Tourette's Syndrome, but that hasn't stopped him from giving millions of dollars away to some of the craziest causes imaginable: creationism, anti-gay marriage, anti-gay clerics in the Episcopalian Church, and so many others that in its list of America's most influential evangelicals a couple of years back, Time listed Howard and his wife Roberta as simply "The Financiers."
.....It's no surprise then, that Ahmanson has so far been the top individual donor to the Protect Marriage Act, the November ballot initiative that wants to create a California constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Through his private philanthropic enterprise, Fieldstead and Co., Ahmanson has donated an amazing $400,000 to the initiative—even more than Focus on the Family and topped only by the National Organization for Marriage, a nationwide group whose campaign headquarters to defeat those marryin' gays are in Santa Ana. And remember: this money was spent just to get the ballot measure qualified for November—heaven knows how much money Ahmanson will donate to this cause for the rest of the year.
.....Going through Fieldstead's campaign contributions (he was also one of the principal funders behind Proposition 22, the 2000 measure that the California State Supreme Court recently overturned to allow homosexual nuptials [sic]), we found Ahmanson also gives money to the county's crazy Republicans—last year, he donated to supervisors John Moorlach, Pat Bates, Janet Nguyen and Diane Harkey; Assemblymember Chuck Devore and Mimi Walters; Dana Point Mayor Diane Harkey, and DA Tony Rackauckas, while 2006 saw him donate to the campaigns of Irvine councilmember Christina Shea, Costa Mesa Minutemen councilmembers Allan Mansoor and Wendy Leece, South Orange County Community College District trustee (and former OC GOP chair) Tom Fuentes, and more to Walters and Devore. If the local Democratic Party had any brains, they'd pull a Jeremiah Wright on all these people for accepting money from such a paleo-conservative (just read up on his mentor, R.J. Rushdoony—and the Wikipedia entry doesn't do justice to the looniness of the man. Or consider that when the Orange County Register's Peter Larsen interviewed Howard and Roberta for a 2004 story, Howard said of countries that stone adulterers and homosexuals, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things," and that Howard saw "homosexuality as an illness akin to alcoholism, which treatment might cure."). But they won't do that, because to criticize politicians for taking money from Ahmanson means they'll have to go after one of their own: State Senator Lou Correa….

"G.I. Bill" benefits more than doubled; other news

• Some are very unhappy with how this will be funded, but, yes, the increase in benefits will be funded. According to the Associated Press (Bipartisan accord reached on war funding bill), a bipartisan agreement reached yesterday would provide “$162 billion in long-overdue funding to carry out military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year.”

.....House passage of the bill, expected Thursday, would also pave the way for a quick infusion of emergency flood relief for the Midwest, a 13-week extension of unemployment payments for the longtime jobless and a big boost in GI Bill college for veterans.
…
.....The White House — and Capitol Hill Republicans — had signaled greater flexibility in recent weeks after Democrats orchestrated impressive votes to more than double GI Bill college benefits and give a 13-week extension of unemployment payments for people whose benefits have run out.
.....In late-stage talks, Democrats dropped a provision to pay for the GI college benefits by imposing a half-percentage point income tax surcharge on incomes exceeding $500,000 for singles and incomes over $1 million earned by married couples….
…
.....Conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats are upset that the new GI Bill benefits, with costs tentatively estimated at $62 billion over the next decade, will be added to the deficit instead of being "paid for" as called for under House rules.
....."We know the day of reckoning is coming," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., who called the measure "totally irresponsible."
.....The new GI Bill essentially would guarantee a full scholarship at any in-state public university, along with a monthly housing stipend, for people who serve in the military for at least three years. It is aimed at replicating the benefits awarded veterans of World War II and more than doubles the value of the benefit — from $40,000 today to $90,000.
.....Full details of the nuts and bolts of the measure won't be released until Thursday….

• In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

A civil grand jury blasted the governing board of San Joaquin Delta College in a report released Wednesday, accusing trustees of misspending millions of dollars in public funds and of repeatedly violating the state’s open records laws by discussing the contents of closed session outside its meetings. “The Grand Jury has no confidence in the Delta College Board of Trustees as they are currently constituted,” its members wrote in the report of their investigation, which was prompted by citizen complaints. “The District needs capable trustees who are able to meet the task of bringing Delta College into the 21st century.”

• In this morning’s New York Times: Seas Rising and Warming Faster Than Realized:

.....On a very busy climate-oil-politics day I was able to just squeak in a short print piece last night on a new study in the journal Nature clarifying what’s happening with the oceans in a heating world (the heat held in by a building greenhouse blanket has largely accumulated in the oceans and physics demands that it will eventually add to atmospheric warming).
.....As you may be aware, those rejecting the enormous body of evidence pointing to a growing human influence on climate had embraced some transitory findings implying that the oceans were cooling. This new work may help resolve that particular line of debate. The formula holds: more CO2 = warming world = less ice + higher seas + lots of changing climate patterns.
.....The study, by Australian and American researchers, reviewed millions of measurements of ocean temperatures taken using a particular instrument on submarines and other vessels over four decades. The researchers found a subtle error that, when fixed, shows that the rate at which seas warmed and rose between 1961 and 2003 was about 50 percent greater than previous estimates.
.....The instrument in question, an expendable bathythermograph, is cheap and disposable, used for example by submarines to find the thermocline, the depth where warm and cold layers of ocean water meet. It was designed to take snapshots of water temperatures, not to collect readings that could be compared year after year, as is required with climate studies. Oceanographers have been trying to identify errors in the ocean-temperature data for awhile....

• Did you notice this one in Tuesday’s OC Reg?

OC tsunami ready

.....We’re not actually ready, of course, but we did meet certain minimal standards. Better than nothing.
.....Dissent has covered the topic of OC tsunamis before:

So Cal Tsunamis?
Preparing for the Big Wet One

The upshot? If a big landslide occurs on the Catalina side of the channel, we've got about ten minutes to prepare for a huge tsunami that will devastate our coast. Such events have occurred historically—and are thus inevitable?—but remain unlikely any time soon.