Huntington Beach and God

I dunno. When I drive through Huntington Beach, I don’t see much religion, but maybe I don’t know what to look for.

• IT’S A PATRIOTIC THING. In yesterday’s OC Reg ('In God We Trust' goes up in Huntington Beach chambers), we learned that the city of Huntington Beach has now nailed its spankin’ new “In God We Trust” motto to a wall.

As the Reg explains, the city council voted in April to make a motto display, so they made one, and it’s round. They stuck it behind the dais in the council chambers.

In the Reg article, Councilman Joe Carchio offers my favorite quote of the day:

"To me it has nothing to do with religion…It is the motto of our county…it is a patriotic thing."

A person so inclined could spend a nice afternoon unpacking that remark.

• THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. Meanwhile, the Huntington Beach Union High School District must decide whether or not to offer a “Bible as literature” class, a proposal that was raised and then rejected (too little demand, etc.) a year and a half ago. (Huntington Beach trustees to discuss Bible class tonight.) Evidently, the matter is—or is perceived to be—a hot potato by school district trustees, for they’ve “refused” to discuss the matter for a year now, or so says the Reg.

Could be they simply felt that the matter had been settled.

But in June, people showed up at the board meeting to support the class.

One trustee, Matthew Harper, had been pressing for the matter to be discussed for a year, but he finally got a colleague to help put the matter on the agenda three months ago.

So tonight’s the night.

“Bible as literature” courses are common at the college level. For instance, Irvine Valley College offers Literature 40, “Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)” and Literature 41, “Introduction to the New Testament.”

Obviously, "Bible as literature" courses tend to approach “the Bible” as a piece of literature. But that may raise issues for those who view it as the Word.

Here’s how the above courses are described in the IVC course catalog:

LIT 40: This course offers a general introduction to the Hebrew Bible…, with particular focus on historical, textual, cultural, and literary issues. Students will consider the historical development of narrative, lyric, dramatic, and legal texts that eventually came to constitute the Hebrew Bible; explore questions of authorship and textual evolution; and study the processes and themes by which these writings exerted a formative influence on the development of Western Literature.

LIT 41: Lit 41 offers a non-doctrinal, literary and historical introduction to the New Testament and related texts. Of central interest in the course will be consideration of the various cultural, philosophical, and literary contexts out of which the Christian Bible emerged. Students will engage in such topics as the representation of Jesus; the influence of Paul; the nature and role of the early Christian churches; the variety of interpretive approaches to the text; the composition and formation of a canon; the relationship of Jewish eschatological and gnostic literature; and the influence of central New Testament themes, characters, and motifs on subsequent literature.

I think these courses are great, but taking one of them must be a weird experience for a believer. I mean, if the Bible is the word of God, then what's all this stuff about apocrypha and disputes and Babylonians?

Textual evolution? I recall being a young believer. In my mind, the Word didn't evolve. It was spoken. And that was that.

Suppose you owned Moses' Ten Commandment tablets (I know, I know, but work with me). You've always taken them to be the writings of God, carved by lightning on a mountain top thousands of years ago.

But, one day, you notice some marks on the bottom of the tablets. You get out your glasses; you get really close. You read: "Made in China."

Kinda takes the starch out of the whole thing, doesn't it?

• GOD HATES YOU. Yesterday, Gustavo Arellano posted about local preacher Robert Morey—think of a cross between Charles Nelson Reilly and Elmer Gantry—who seems to be pissing people off and weirding them out. (ANOTHER FORMER ROBERT MOREY PARISHIONER LEAVES.)

Gustavo explains that some who leave Morey’s church in Irvine are spilling some cult beans. Gustavo includes a YouTube video of Morey, preaching about how God doesn’t love everybody. In fact, he hates "certain people." Probably you. Check it out:



OK, Morey's church isn't in Huntington Beach, but I bet he visits there a lot.

The "Iraq/Pakistan border"?

Last week, Senator McCain seemed to reveal that he does not know how Social Security works.

Today, he seemed to reveal that he does not know how the geography of the Middle East works either.



UPDATE:

.....From McCain gaffes pile up, by Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei (Politico):

• … Diane Sawyer…asked whether the "the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent.”
.....McCain responded: “I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border." The ABC posting [noted]: “Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do.”
.....Unfortunately for McCain, that wasn’t an isolated slip.
.....Among the other lapses:

• “Somalia” for “Sudan”: As recounted in a reporter’s pool report from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus on June 30, the senator said while discussing Darfur, a region of Sudan: "How can we bring pressure on the government of Somalia?"
.....Senior adviser Mark Salter corrected him: “Sudan.”
• “Germany” for “Russia”: A YouTube clip from last year memorializes McCain referring to Vladimir Putin of Russia — following a trip to Germany — as “President Putin of Germany.”
• This spring, McCain said troops in Iraq were “down to pre-surge levels” when in fact there were 20,000 more troops than when the surge policy began.
• Also this spring, McCain twice appeared to mistake Sunnis and Shiites, two branches of Islam that split violently. 


• In Phoenix earlier this month, McCain referred to Czechoslovakia, which has been divided since Jan. 1, 1993, into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He also referred to Czechoslovakia during a debate in November and a radio show in April. 


• In perhaps the most curious incident, McCain said earlier this month that as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he had tried to confuse his captors by giving the names of Pittsburgh Steelers starting players when asked to identify his squadron mates. McCain has told the story many times over the years — but always correctly referred to the names he gave as members of the Green Bay Packers.

SLOs: “We think this is crap,” says the respected conservative scholar

• WE KNOW WHAT’S WRONG, BUT HOW DO WE FIX IT?
In this mornings’s Inside Higher Ed:

Who Leads?:

As a group of state leaders at last week’s Education Department summit on higher education began a discussion aimed at identifying the biggest problems facing higher education and potential achievable solutions to them, the session’s moderator asked for a volunteer willing to report back to the larger summit about the fruits of the group’s brainstorming. … So, any volunteers? she asked again. Despite repeated entreaties, no takers emerged. ¶ That small moment provided an apt metaphor for a nagging problem that has underscored much of the nearly three-year conversation surrounding the Bush administration’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education and its campaign to reform American higher education.

IHE explains that, when [Education Secretary] Margaret Spellings appointed her commission in 2005, there was general agreement about the issues in higher ed:

[We must] Significantly increase the number of young Americans and adults who enter and succeed in college, by strengthening the academic preparation of those emerging from the nation’s high schools and expanding the capacity of colleges and universities. Make higher education more affordable, by simplifying the student aid system and making colleges more cost effective. Improve the transparency of higher education, to help policy makers judge the success of postsecondary institutions.

Unfortunately, there’s been little agreement concerning how to solve these problems and what sort of role the Feds should have. And there’s been tremendous resistance to Spelling’s approach. See below.

• SLO ASSESSMENTS “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” FOR COLLEGES? SO SAY SOME CONSERVATIVE SCHOLARS.
Also in Inside Higher Ed: Could the Wrong Assessment Kill the Liberal Arts?:

Unlikely critics gathered Friday to offer strong criticisms of the Education Department’s push for assessment using standardized instruments. Among the critics were Diane Auer Jones, president of the Washington Campus, who recently stepped down from her position as secretary for the Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education. She and others told Congressional staff and university administrators that the liberal arts…are endangered by these proposed federal assessment efforts. Some say these tested assessments apply the approach of No Child Left Behind to postsecondary education, making them both incompatible and counterintuitive.

One of the participants in the gathering was Peter Wood, the executive director of the conservative National Association of Scholars, which has pressed for greater rigor in college curriculum. He is no fan of the DoE’s approach:

The department’s insistence on testing for specific learning outcomes … provide what he called a “severely impoverished view of what higher education should be.” The push to focus on learning outcomes at the college level, according to Wood, are “a distraction and, at worse, a menace” for instructors. Promoting learning outcome assessments, Wood said, assumes all collegiate courses have a specified skill-set of knowledge that can be identified in advance of having these courses instructed.

Wood noted that instructors often simply ignore SLOs:

“We bluff,” Wood said of some instructors who identify quantifiable sets of skills or knowledge, noting that accreditation reviews typically verify only what a college sets out to accomplish. “We think this is nonsense. We think this is crap. We put on paper what we’re going to do and then do something else anyway.”

See also Outcomes Based Assessments are Destructive of a Liberal Education written, it appears, by a conservative.
Making sense of SLOs, a recent DtB post

• MEANWHILE, AT UC:
Also in IHE:

Mark G. Yudof, the new president of the University of California, has announced plans for new accountability reports for campuses and the system he leads. The first report is expected this fall and will cover topics such as affordability, diversity, research successes and graduation rates. In announcing the planned reports, Yudof embraced the kind of language used by Bush administration officials and others who have charged that universities are not nearly accountable enough for performance….

• MICHAEL SAVAGE THINKS AUTISM IS PHONY.
Have you followed the latest Michael Savage controversy? (See Savage Stands by Autistic Remarks.) Evidently, the popular “conservative” radio host believes that autism is a phony condition. Hear him say just that in a clip available here.

It’s one thing to wonder why diagnoses of autism have increased so rapidly. It is at least possible that the condition is over-diagnosed. But only an ignoramus would make the claim that autism is “phony” and that autistic kids are simply stupid or misbehaving.

How can there be so large an audience for this man? What’s the matter with people?

• OBAMA AND MCCAIN COMING TO SADDLEBACK CHURCH.
The New York Times reports that Obama and McCain will attend a forum at Saddleback Church in August (McCain and Obama Agree to Attend Megachurch Forum):

…The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch….

U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION SPELLINGS ON THE DAILY SHOW (5/07):

Chimps

Today, a friend emailed this photo of his brother's new cat, Schubert. That's all I got, the name.

I had a chance to spend a little time with my two new nieces, Natalie and Catherine. These two girls are utterly different. Natalie, with the darker hair, is very outgoing. Catherine is very shy. This difference was evident from the very start. Makes you wonder.

Here's Catherine whistling to her sister. (Well, maybe.)

Here's Natalie, noticing.

In my family, little ones, whether human, canine, or feline, are called "chimps," as in "Hey, come on over, we've got chimps!"

Mr. Moon, a couple of nights ago, from my house, in the quiet Santa Ana mountains.

Keep on rockin' in the free world

• OC LIBERAL LAW LOOMS.
.....The LA Times reports on UC Irvine’s new law school (Flap over dean's hiring doesn't keep UC Irvine's law school from lining up prominent staff).
.....As you know, last year, well-known constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky was hired and then fired as dean of the long-sought law school.
.....As the Times explains,

In the weeks before [UCI Chancellor Michael] Drake rescinded the offer to Chemerinsky, prominent conservatives, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich and former state Republican Party Chairman Michael Schroeder, one of Orange County's most powerful GOP political players, sought to derail his appointment through e-mails and phone calls to the university.

.....(DtB readers know all about Mr. Schroeder, a close associate of trustee Tom Fuentes.)
.....So Drake fired Chemerinsky. That backfired. The firing blew up into an academic freedom cause célèbre. Efforts at damage control led to Chemerinsky being rehired and Drake looking like a used piñata.
.....Many thought that the firing incident would doom Chemerinsky’s efforts to pull together an impressive team of faculty. They were wrong. Even conservatives seem impressed by the “dream team" that the C-man has assembled thus far.
.....Legal scholars tend to be moderately liberal, and so it comes as no surprise that the School’s new crew tilts in that direction, but Chemerinsky has not sought liberals. He has made an effort, however, to hire conservatives:

Chemerinsky…has deliberately courted prominent right-wing thinkers for hire at UCI—so far unsuccessfully—said Elizabeth Loftus, a UCI psychology professor who will teach courses at the law school and has been involved in recruiting. "He is not afraid to be in a place where there's people who disagree," she said.

.....To see the UCI law school faculty list, go to list.

• CARONA CARNIVAL SIDESHOW.
.....Remember Sheriff Mike Carona’s “reserve deputies” money-making scheme? Among the more infamous of his deputies was his martial arts instructor, Raymond Yi. The fellow “was accused of pulling a gun in 2005 on a group of golfers he thought were playing too slowly.”
.....In May, Yi was convicted of a felony count. Now, he’s “seeking a new trial on the grounds that a bailiff improperly talked with jurors during their deliberations about a gun that was a key piece of evidence in the case.” See Carona's martial arts teacher seeks retrial for Chino Hills golf incident.

• HOLLYWOOD STARS AT LAGUNA BEACH.
.....At a fund-raiser in Laguna Beach Thursday night, Harrison Ford, among others, was honored for his environmental work. (Stars come to O.C. to raise green for green cause.)
.....Everyone was invited—everyone, that is, who paid $500 (minimum) for a ticket.
.....Among the celebs: Ted Danson, Diane Lane, Diane Keaton, Jeff Goldblum, Beau Bridges and Sam Waterston.
.....And, of course, Calista Flockhart.
.....Some of ‘em were flown in by helicopter.
.....Also honored, says the OC Reg, “were John Picard, a Corona del Mar advocate of environmentally-sustainable architecture, and actor Sam Waterston, star of TV's ‘Law and Order.’”

• NEWBRIDGE COLLEGE?
.....Apparently, there is some sort of medical technician “college” in Santa Ana called “Newbridge.” It’s been in operation since 1976. (See Former enrollees file class-action suit against Newbridge College.)
.....Marla Jo Fisher informs us that some unhappy students have filed a class-action suit against the college, “alleging they were each defrauded out of $10,000 tuition by promises they could earn good salaries for medical jobs they were ineligible to obtain.”
.....They claim that they need an “associates” degree to get decent jobs, but Newbridge does not offer that degree.

• YOUNG UP TO HIS OLD TRICKS.
.....The wacky and occasionally wonderful Neil Young is about to release yet another film (July 25), this one a documentary of a tour with Crosby, Still, and Nash. (See Neil Young, Where Politics and Technology Meet.)
.....Before the tour, Young persuaded his mates to focus on the material of his controversial and well-regarded anti-war album. And so, during the tour, when the group commenced singing about impeachment of the President and the like, well, the shit hit the fan:

.....…[H]is band mates took to the antiwar theme eagerly. … But the audiences were not exactly unanimous in agreement. In Atlanta, the first verse of Mr. Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President” brought boos, middle fingers and worse.
…
.....To establish a journalistic tone for the film, Mr. Young hired Mike Cerre, a former ABC war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be “embedded” on the tour, interviewing fans and capturing the mood of the shows.
…
.....Mr. Cerre said he was given complete freedom to produce 12 newsy segments. Larry Johnson, the film’s producer, said most of them were used, and with only minor editing for length. Mr. Cerre found some support among concertgoers for the band’s politics, but what stands out are unflattering shots of the aging group onstage — like Stephen Stills, then 61, struggling to get up after a fall during “Rockin’ in the Free World” — and complaints from fans, not always civil, who disapproved of the political message.

.....I guess the reporter isn’t aware that there are other reasons, beyond age, for Stills’ trouble getting up off the floor.

A friend passed along this amazing little video about two guys reuniting with their LION, who had been released into the wild:

Hot for words: "general time horizon"

New York Times: U.S. and Iraq Agree to Goals for Troop Cuts:

The United States and Iraq have agreed to set a “general time horizon” for the “further reduction of U.S. combat forces in Iraq” following the improvement in security conditions in the country, the White House said Friday.
…
The administration on Friday insisted that it had not shifted its position. It said that the move was simply a reflection of the changing nature of conditions in Iraq.

“These are aspirational goals, not artificial timetables based on political expediency,” said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman....

I thought that the Administration didn’t want to set any points in time—lines or points on the timeline—for withdrawals of troops? They've been pretty clear about that.

Hmmm. A time “horizon,” is, of course, a horizon, and, according to my Mac's dictionary, a horizon is a line:

horizon |həˈrīzən|
noun
1 [usu. in sing. ] the line at which the earth's surface and the sky appear to meet : the sun rose above the horizon.

So a “time horizon” is clearly a point in time, a line on the timeline. A "general" time horizon presumably is one that is not specific: between this month and that month. OK, but to the extent that one is general, one is failing to really say anything. "We'll withdraw troops some time in the future" is meaningless. Further, those who have argued for a timeline don't seem to have a problem with some generality re the line or lines.

The White House says that the horizon will not be "artificial." Artificial means “produced by human beings.” The White House's “time horizon” will of course be produced by human beings—unless they're consulting astrologers or tea leaves.

“Aspirational”? That’s just fancy talk for “we want this.” An "aspirational" goal is just a goal. C'mon.


So, I guess what this comes down to is: the White House has shifted its position. What's more, it has shifted it in the direction of what war critics have long wanted.

But it is asserting that, unlike war critics, the White House’s desire for an artificial timetable is not based on “political expediency.”

OK. That means that, unlike critics, the White House is not motivated by politics. —You know, like wanting to help out Republicans who are facing an election in a few months.

Really?

You gotta love politics.

HotForWords: "phoney"

A star for a Mexican

As he himself informs us today, Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican) is about to publish a history of Orange County (Sept. 16), and the book has just been very positively reviewed by Publishers Weekly, which writes:

Orange County: A Memoir
Gustavo Arellano. Scribner, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4165-4004-5

Readers get two stories for the price of one in this witty and informative memoir. Journalist Arellano (¡Ask a Mexican!) chronicles the sweet-and-sour story of his family's assimilation into American culture, while also recounting a historical narrative at odds with the bucolic ideal of a place that's been mythologized for decades. “We're so American, so Orange County, that we're even prone to romanticize a past that never existed.” Arellano's structure keeps the narrative moving along at a snappy pace, alternating the threads of the story so “odd chapters constitute the memoir, even chapters tell the history, and one complements the other.” Readers get solid background on the beginning of master-planned communities during the 1920s, the little remembered Citrus War, Orange County's embarrassing 1994 bankruptcy and special mix of conservatism coupled with a dollop of big-time religion. “A 2005 Harper's article named Orange County the country's second hotbed of evangelical Christianity after Colorado Springs,” Arellano writes, and of the 100 megachurches in the U.S. with the largest congregations, four are in Orange County. Arellano explores a place he calls the “Petri dish for America's continuing democratic experiment” and delivers a prescient view of the new American landscape.