Red County whistles in the dark

TODAY, on the popular Red County (OC) blog, Tyler H (one of RC’s stable of conservative bloggers) reports on the upcoming SOCCCD trustee races.

According to Tyler, “the Tom Fuentes' [sic] led majority seems well-positioned to deliver another victory this year.” He is referring, I suppose, to the block comprising Fuentes, Don Wagner, John Williams—and Dave Lang.

No doubt Don Wagner, the president of the board, will be pleased to hear that Tom is the leader.

C’mon Don. Don’t that piss you off? Not even a little?

Tyler refers to “Tom Fuentes ally and Area #1 Trustee David Lang.” It pleases me to have Lang’s sympathies stated so clearly and publicly. For many years, Lang had strong faculty support (especially at Irvine Valley College), owing to his distaste for board majority toady (President, then Chancellor) Raghu P. Mathur. But then visions of "OC Treasurer" danced in Dave's head—no doubt he figured that Fuentes would be helpful there—and so he suddenly became Mathur's big supporter. Why? Cuz Fuentes just loves Mathur. Why? Cuz Mathur will do anything Fuentes tells him to do.

Lang is the Benedict Arnold of the SOCCCD. We’ll never forget you, Dave.

Tyler thinks that, judging by Lang’s challenger’s (viz., Carolyn Inmon’s) recent political history, he is likely to hold onto his seat.

Incumbent Bill Jay (area 3: Aliso Viejo, Laguna Beach and Dana Point) is seeking reelection. According to Tyler, he faces real estate investor Randall Johnson. Tyler tags Jay as the enemy, cuz he's a unionist:

Bill Jay has not been supportive of Tom Fuente's [sic] efforts to maintain fiscal sanity and is regarded as a "Union Guy", so it is unsurprising that the pro-Faculty website Save the socccd is supporting Bill Jay. Randell Johnson is a new face.

Fiscal sanity? Like our huge problem complying with the 50% law, caused by Fuentes’ man Mathur? Like the ATEP black hole, promoted by Fuentes' man Mathur?

And what about Accredular sanity? Thanks to the Fuentes board and their toady Mathur, for the first time in the district's history, its two colleges face the possibility of losing their accreditation (in January). The Accreds are not impressed with endless trustee micromanagement and the pall of despair created mostly by the ruthless and conniving Mathur.

BTW: gosh, Tyler, thanks for the mention. I didn’t think anybody read that little website (Save the SOCCCD). As soon as I created it several months ago, I couldn’t get anybody in the union leadership to visit it (I wanted feedback so that it would be OK with the PAC). I pretty much had to abandon it.

Well, at least this Tyler fella reads it.

Tyler seems wary of trustee John Williams, who is the incumbent in area 7 (Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita):

Area 7 … is the most curious race. Sixteen-year incumbent John Williams faces "Retired Educator" Carl Christensen. Tom Fuentes ally … Don Wagner considers John Williams a solid Republican, a fiscal conservative, and a helpful ally on the board. However the Save the SOCCCD website is also currently endorsing John Williams. Perhaps Carl Christensen is so focused on his favorite issue (he is a history teacher who recently spoke to the board about the need for more history classes) that he hasn't noticed that both opposing factions are supporting his opponent?

••••

On Friday, Red County’s Jubal (aka Matt Cunningham) posted about Tom Fuentes’ race against Bob Bliss (Tom Fuentes' Community College Re-Election Campaign Off To Powerful Start).

Fuentes, said Jubal, is “off to a powerful start” in his re-election efforts. The union, says the Jube, “might as well save their money, because Tom Fuentes will run over Bliss like a freight train.”

How come?

Well, first, Fuentes is the incumbent. Second, Fuentes has made lots of friends over the years, and they’ll pony up some big money. Then there’s Tom’s impressive list of endorsements (Jubal presents a list of 81—the usual suspects).

Jubal speculates that this is a case of a union leadership supporting candidates it knows will lose—to placate the rank and file.

Well, we’ll just see about that.

P.S.: At Red County, I've commented on both the Tyler and Jubal posts, indicating to each writer the error of his ways! I do hope they'll try to respond. Probably not. We're small potatoes.

Indications of a willingness to kick academic butt

Recently, I attended a meeting in which faculty and others discussed Saddleback College’s accreditation difficulty. The Accreds had sent the college a letter in February essentially requiring the college to “address” long-standing recommendations (in a report due Oct. 15)—or else.

Clearly, one reason the Accreds’ latest threat has not inspired much reaction in some is the conviction that the Accreds are all bark and no bite. Given their history, that view is understandable. The SOCCCD’s two colleges have been dinged for trustee micromanagement and a “plague of despair” for years. (Hell, they were carping about that ten years ago!) We’re still living under such dingage. And we’re still accredited.

But things change. At the meeting, I explained the special circumstances that we are now in: some time ago, the Dept. of Education spanked the Accrediting agency (ACCJC/WASC) hard for failing to enforce its own rules—for being namby-pamby. Prima facie, this gives the Accreds a motive to finally kick some academic butt.

It’s a bit more complex than that—we’ve reported on the details here on this blog for quite some time—but, essentially, we’d be taking a hell of a chance ignoring or discounting the Accred’s threat to pull the colleges' tickets. (Both of our colleges got such letters.)

Well now hear this. Our old pal Jeff Gottlieb over at the Times is reporting on some Accred butt-kickage in LA (Los Angeles Southwest College is put on probation).

According to Jeff, “Los Angeles Southwest College has been placed on probation by the regional accrediting agency, an action local college officials call unwarranted.”

Here’s the kicker. The president of Southwest asserts that “It's completely unprecedented to put a college on probation where there was no previous indication the college was in trouble….”

He notes, reports Jeff, that “probation was primarily given to colleges that failed to respond to accreditors' recommendations from previous visits.” That’s not Southwest’s situation.

So, here’s evidence that things have changed in Accredville re butt-kickage. Take note.

Another fine example of Mathur's leadership

I KEEP trying to ignore it, but no one will let me.

Many citizens of our little district community were amazed last Thursday when Chancellor Raghu Mathur spammed us with Governor Schwarzenegger’s infamous executive order in response to the state budget impasse. You know the one. According to the AP:

Schwarzenegger's order…eliminated 10,300 seasonal, contract and part-time positions. It also ordered that up to 200,000 permanent, full-time state workers will receive the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour in their paychecks until the budget is passed. (Associated Press.)

The order included a “request” that, among others, state college employees be included in the action:

IT IS FURTHER REQUESTED that other entities of State government not under my direct executive authority, including … the University of California, the California State University, [and] California Community Colleges … assist in the implementation of this Order and implement similar mitigation measures that will help to preserve the State’s cash supply during this budget impasse.

Naturally, that line was in the email Mathur sent to district employees. Mathur offered no explanation of what the Governor's order means for our district and its employees. He allowed us to think that, apparently, we too would be living on minimum wage. Good grief!

Then, 77 minutes later, came a second Mathur missive, which said:

We would like to offer clarification of the Governor’s executive order to address our state’s budget crisis. This information was forwarded to inform employees of the dire nature of the crisis and how it will affect some state employees.

Please be assured that employees of the South Orange County Community College District will receive their payroll checks. There are no plans to terminate temporary/hourly employees at this time.

Let us extend our support during this difficult period to the families affected by the Governorʼs executive order.

Raghu P. Mathur, Ed.D
Chancellor

Oh. So he forwarded the Governor’s order to “inform” us of the “dire nature of the crisis and how it will affect some state employees.” I guess he figured we wouldn’t understand the seriousness of the situation unless we went through 77 minutes of supposing that it would affect us directly.

Thanks, dad. You sure are tough on us kids. In fact, you’re solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

But that’s because you care.

Sam Kinison in "Back to School": he really seems to care


ADMINISTRATORS WANT GREATER FACULTY ROLE IN GOVERNANCE
This morning’s Inside Higher Ed reports on a national survey of college administrators:

A majority (60 percent) believe that faculty members should play a bigger role in running campuses, with most of the rest happy with the status quo and only a few believing that professors should play less of a role. But while seeking more of a faculty role, the administrators share a highly critical view of faculty knowledge and perspective when it comes to campus decision making, with a broad consensus finding professors focused far too much on their own issues or departmental issues, and lacking either the knowledge or perspective to think about institutions as a whole and to promote change.

Sounds about right.

• I WRITE, THEREFORE I POLUTE.
Just in case you required proof that the New York Times' resident postmodern academic curmudgeon, Stanley Fish, is an asshole, read his latest piece: I Am, Therefore I Pollute. Read the reader comments too.

Oh great. California cancer chips.

EXPENSIVE BUT OFTEN WORTHLESS DIPLOMAS.

Friday, our pal Marla Jo Fisher wrote about the many graduates of local vocational schools who find that their diplomas, though costly, profiteth them nothing (Students wanted jobs, but got debt instead).

Marla informs us that “Each year, some 400,000 students are enrolled in the state's for-profit schools. At last count, 160 of such schools were operating in Orange County.”

160!

WHITE PUNK ON DOPE.

This morning’s New York Times discusses the saga of the making of “What We Do Is Secret,” a movie about the 70’s Hollywood punk band The Germs (A Phoenix of a Film Exhumes a Punk Prince).

Germs' singer Darby Crash committed suicide in 1980, all according to plan:

In 1975, at the age of 17, he devised a five-year plan for achieving immortality: form a band, collect a following, release one album, then commit suicide. … On the night of Dec. 7, 1980, Crash injected a lethal dose of heroin and lay down in his leather jacket.

It was a good plan. Unfortunately, John Lennon died the next day and so, today, only fans of punk remember the Darbster.

WHITE PUNK ON OED.

Also in today’s Times—a terrific review of a book that recounts author Ammon Shea's reading of the entire Oxford English Dictionary (From A to Zyxt):

Shea is well equipped for the task he has set himself. He owns about a thousand dictionaries, which he keeps on shelves in the apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Alix, who teaches psychology courses at Barnard. Some of the dictionaries he bought from a book dealer named Madeline, who lives in a loft in Lower Manhattan. Madeline owns 20,000 dictionaries. She taught Shea, he says, “the ineffable joy that can be had in pursuing the absurd.”

Amazingly, Shea’s word odyssey sounds interesting. The book is divided into chapters, each one a letter in the dictionary, Chapter A to Chapter Z:

Months in, Shea arrives—back-aching, crabby, page-blind—at Chapter N. “Some days I feel as if I do not actually speak the English language,” he writes, his verbal cortex overflowing. “It is,” he observes, “like trying to remember all the trees one sees through the window of a train.” Once he stares for a while, amazed, at the word glove. “I find myself wondering why I’ve never seen this odd term that describes such a common article of clothing.”

I recall playing “Boggle,” a word game, with my brother Ray. I claimed the word “four” (pronounced, it seems, to rhyme with “Bauer”). Ray looked at me. “That’s not a word,” he declared. I wasn't sure. We looked it up in a dictionary.

Soon, we burst out laughing. The Bauers don't need no stinkin' dictionary reading marathon to manage to look at an utterly familiar word and to not recognize it!

YOU SAY "POTATO," I SAY "ACRYLAMIDE".

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle informs us that “Frito-Lay and two other potato chip companies have agreed to reduce the levels of a cancer-causing chemical in their products in a settlement of a state lawsuit….” Or so said California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Evidently, the culprit is something called acrylamide. The stuff is “used industrially for treating sewage….” It is present in lots of fried potato products:

Besides Frito-Lay, which sells most of the potato chips in California, the other companies agreeing to reduce acrylamide levels are Kettle Foods, maker of Kettle Chips, and Lance Inc., maker of Cape Cod Chips, Brown's office said. In another settlement last week, Heinz agreed to cut in half the acrylamide levels in Ore-Ida frozen french fries and tater tots and pay $600,000 in penalties and costs, the state said. … Procter & Gamble agreed in January to reduce acrylamide by 50 percent in Pringles potato chips. McDonald's, KFC, Wendy's and Burger King agreed last year to post warnings about acrylamide in chips and fries.

Nobody knew it was in these chips until a few years ago.

Good grief.

INFAMOUS SERBIAN FUGITIVE PRACTICED ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE.

On Friday, physicist Bob Park noted that mass murderer Radovan Karadzic was finally arrested after 13 years.

How, Bob asks, could the fellow support himself in hiding all this time? Says Bob,

"No problem. He practiced alternative medicine, which requires little more than a lack of scruples. He was fully qualified."

TUBES: "White Punks On Dope" (circa 1977)

Little monsters

WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS RIGHT-WINGERS?

.....A couple of days ago, the LA Times’ James Rainey discussed the coarseness of discussion on the internet (Website comment boards bring out the inner vulgarian). Rainey starts with the Washington Post’s recent debunking of John McCain’s charge that his Democratic opponent blew off his visit with injured troops because he couldn’t bring the press along. Turns out to be utterly false, as the WP explained.
.....In response, the WP got thousands of comments on the internet, most of them anonymous. Some were civil. Many weren’t:

[One reader] complained about "the 'whitey' rants of Michelle Shaniqua Obama. Doesn't she realize that it was whitey's affirmative action policies that got her where she is today?"
…
[Another reader] scored a high imbecile quotient with just 42 words that painted McCain as a "songbird" and traitor because of the limited statements he made to his captors during 5 1/2 years of brutal wartime imprisonment in North Vietnam.

.....Rainey observes that “the Internet all too often discourages, or coarsens, a healthy civic discussion.” He quotes author Andrew Keen: "The people who post on these sites have become accustomed to behaving like beasts because they can, because no one is really monitoring them.”
.....Unlike some blogs and websites, Dissent the Blog does not filter comments. Anyone can comment and say anything. After the fact, we have occasionally deleted comments, but only in particularly egregious cases. We don’t mind people disagreeing with us (or with others). We do mind when someone calls somebody a “pig-f*cker.”
.....I dunno. That’s just too ugly to leave up there.
.....Racist stuff has been deleted, but not because it is racist. A big problem with some posts is that the writer takes a controversial position on some issue but does not bother really to give reasons for it. As near as I can tell, such writers aren’t aware that reasons would be a plus. They just attack, scream, assault.
.....Remember that little monster that popped out of John Hurt’s chest in Alien? They’re kinda like that little guy. No arguments, just horror.
.....As far as I’m concerned, you get to be a racist (or a contemner of gays or, for that matter, a lover of pigs), as long as you provide a decent argument. But none of those people ever seems to have one. They usually don’t even have an indecent one.
.....But failing to give reasons isn’t enough to get booted either. You get to be a dope, I say. But I often encounter the lovely combo of a racist (or hater of liberals, or basher of gays) who offers no reasons or arguments AND who seems to have written merely to insult or upset their perceived opponents.
.....I usually delete those.
.....Invariably, these little monsters are right-wingers. Why is that? You never hear a liberal or leftist or progressive calling somebody a pig-f*cker. Maybe they don’t have any imagination. Dunno.
.....One more thing. I take back my comparison of these internet vulgarians with that little monster in John Hurt’s chest. And Keen is wrong to call these little right-wingers “beasts,” for beasts are animals, and animals never insult. They might eat you because they’re hungry, or chew through your chest because they’re stuck there, but they do not insult or offend.
.....You gotta respect that.

OUR SPECIAL WHISTLE-BLOWER LAW.

.....Yesterday, The San Francisco Chronicle reported on a dismal ruling last week by the state Supreme Court. (Whistle-blowers lose case against UC.)
.....According to the Chronicle, “University of California employees who claim they were fired for reporting wrongdoing or unsafe conditions can't sue for damages if the university rejects their claims….”
.....As it turns out, our whistle-blower law, “which allows employees of state agencies to seek damages for alleged retaliation by supervisors,” nevertheless prevents plaintiffs from going after UC if it has investigated the alleged retaliation and cleared itself.
.....Huh?
.....The ruling concerned a lawsuit by two former computer scientists at UC's Lawrence Livermore Lab, Leo Miklosy and Luciana Messina, who, in 2003, were working on determining the safety of the country’s nuclear weapons. According to the suit, they complained to supervisors about equipment and personnel problems. Soon, Miklosy was let go and Messina quit after (allegedly) hearing that she would soon be fired.
.....Miklosy and Messina complained. The UC lab investigated their cases and judged (within a required period) that neither employee had been retaliated against. Then came the suit, but the Supremes now say these two have no right to sue.
.....One of the justices, despite agreeing with the decision, urged the Legislature to change the 1993 law that makes UC special.
.....Boy, that’s some law, that whistle-blower law.
.....“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

Technical problems

.....Two Dissent readers have contacted me because they can't open the blog with Internet Explorer. No doubt this is a widespread problem among IE users. [UPDATE, 8/2: one IE reader says he can now open DtB. How about others?]

.....Reminder: I have started a new blog: Contra PalaVerities. You will not be surprised to learn that it is the finest blog of its kind in the entire universe. Or not. The url is

contrapalaverities.blogspot.com

.....So far, CP behaves as though it were nearly invisible. I think I'm having technical problems there, too. Plus, these new glasses are shit. Boy am I feeling old.

"Pay attention to what tastes good," and other advice from the Academy

• OTHERS' "LAST LECTURES."

Especially since Randy Pausch’s death, there’s been lots of buzzage about “last lectures.” The Reg’s Science Dude (Dying scientist’s “Last Lecture” inspires O.C.) explains that “Pausch [was] a terminally ill Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist who gave a deeply inspirational ‘last lecture’ that was videotaped and placed on the Internet, where it became wildly popular.”

To see the video, click here.

The Reg asked OC scientists what they’d say in a “last lecture.”

I’ve gotta say, last lectures, at least the ones this crew would offer, aren’t what they used to be—er, they won’t be (in future) what they used to be (relative to now). Whatever.

UCI astrophysicist Greg Benford would offer this: “A simple rule, whether in the ‘Province of Professors’ or the broad plain of Real Life: Pay attention not to what’s thought to be in good taste, but to what tastes good, to you.”

I dunno. In the wrong hands, this could lead to chocoholism and worse. Plus what’s with that last comma?

Retired UCI criminologist Gil Geis would “admonish the listeners to stop pretending to the extent possible that they are going to live forever.” Sounds good. But then Geis veers off in Benford’s disastrous direction: “I’d also tell them that in the end nobody really cares what you do or don’t do, and that your obligation is to — after measuring the pros and cons — do with your limited time those things that most please you.”

I know guys who would attach themselves permanently to an orgasmatron. Plus I don’t think we oughta be telling kids that it doesn’t matter what they do and so they should just wander off into a corner and please themselves. C’mon.

Chapman’s James Doti offers a cliché: “…find your passion and then convert it into a career.”

Well, at least he didn’t say “seize the day,” like that awful Robin freakin’ Williams. (Even carpe diem sounds like bullshit after you hear it 100,000 times—or just once if it’s comin’ out of the insufferable Mr. Patch Adams.)

CSU Fullerton’s P. Cuajungco, a mathematician, already tells his students to be courteous, to view things from others’ perspective, to empathize, and to be honest. OK.

UCI neurobiologist James McGaugh quotes Alan Alda, who urges us to find out what our values are and then to live by them so we can have a sense of purpose. Not bad, I guess.

Not sure why, but I hate that TV show MASH. Wait, I know: MASH, produced mostly by people who never experienced war, “taught” us about the evils of war and the experience of war every goddam week for, like, ten years, even though the war only lasted three.

I’m as anti-war as anybody, but that crew was shameless.

Not that that takes away from Alda’s Existential bromide about finding purpose. (Apparently, Mr. Alda teaches philosophy, too. Boob.)

UCI’s R. Duncan Luce, another mathematician, would explain about the “interplay of forces” that he encountered early in his career: personal luck, perceptive mentors, passion, and elation. Sounds like apples and oranges to me. Plus he spells “quanderies” incorrectly (that could have been the Reg). And what kind of advice is it to say “lotsa luck”?

Famed UCI psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, the memory expert, recalls her regret at not having been kinder to her dying mother. That one was pretty good. Hope I don’t forget it.

UCI chemist Greg Weiss explains how he altered the course of a student’s life—helping her succeed in her Chem class—just by sitting down with her and helping her out.

Yeah, but how does he know she won’t use her power for evil rather than good? —Just kidding. Weiss seems like a good egg.

• ANIMAL RIGHTS EXTREMISTS HIRE KARL ROVE.

Inside Higher Ed reports on animal rights extremist threats:

Pamphlets found in a coffee shop in Santa Cruz make threats against researchers at the University of California campus there who do research with animals, The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported. The material, which included researchers’ home addresses, said: “Animal abusers everywhere beware; we know where you live; we know where you work; we will never back down until you end your abuse.”

—OK, I’m an animal rights guy, but once you start acting like a Republican running for President, you’ve pretty much lost the war.

• BIG, BAD BILL.

IHR also reports on the Huge, Exacting Accountability Bill just passed by Congress:

If a bill’s impact or importance were measured by its length or the amount of time Congress spent working on it, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 … would be one for the ages. At more than 1,150 pages, the bill is about 20 times longer than the Higher Education Act of 1965 that it modifies, creating 64 new programs and touching on issues as diverse as the availability of Pell Grants and illegal downloading of digital music and video. And the legislation, which finally passed both the House and the Senate by overwhelmingly margins on Thursday, has been in discussion on Capitol Hill, in one form or another, for most of this decade. It is five years overdue….