TigerAnn—or Chupacabra?

Sometimes I just snap away promiscuously. I went outside and did that today. I then downloaded the pics, and this was one of 'em.

It's just that silly cat, TigerAnn, enjoying some grass.

Protests at Cypress College

Above is the OC Register’s brief video coverage of yesterday's protest, at Cypress College, over display of a photograph. The photo shows a young woman wearing a shirt that is similar to the flag of Vietnam while standing near a bust of Communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

Protests were threatened a year ago at Irvine Valley College over the display of the Vietnamese flag among a discreet presentation of "flags of the world" along the "atrium" of the Student Services Building. IVC administration chose to take down all of the flags. Some on campus objected to the de facto knuckling under to what they felt were offensive demands and threats.


Cypress College has consistently refused to remove the offending photograph. As you can see, thus far, the promised protests haven't amounted to much.

As some of our readers have noted, more than a few members of Orange County's Vietnamese community have joined in the defense of free speech and have denounced the censoring spirit of some of these protests. 

Rebel Girl's Bad Dream

In her dream, Rebel Girl was contacted by the college and informed that a famous theologian would be soon making an appearance. Rebel Girl imagined it would be an event similar to the recent one with Ray Bradbury and that she was being contacted as part of the course. You know, writer comes to campus, contact the English teachers.

But no.

The theologian would be speaking, it seemed, not in the new theater but in the bedroom of Rebel Girl's six-year-old son. The college had contacted her so she could be ready.

Wait a minute, Rebel Girl said.

"What?" the college replied. (In dreams, colleges can talk.)

"You can't do that," she complained. "My son's room has only one chair and besides, it's a mess. I mean, seriously. Littered with Legos since Christmas. It's really not the right venue. And parking in the canyon is terrible."

The college was adamant.

Another professor weighed in. "You can't hold the talk there," she pointed out in an email to the college president. "It's not even on campus. It's in the canyon."

The college refused to change its mind.

Rebel Girl, not knowing what else to do, started cleaning up her son's bedroom and prepared for the hordes to arrive.

The speaker arrived first.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

And then, thankfully, Rebel Girl woke up.

“I deserve a A”

From the New York Times:

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

… “Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor [Marshall] Grossman [of U of Maryland] said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
…
James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "sleeping in the cold"

Rebel Girl's middle-aged winters in Southern California are sure different than those of her girlhood in Los Angeles. Then she saw the snow from an impossible distance - these days it is her seasonal friend. Some photos from the long weekend. Forsee Creek was fringed each morning with lacy ice.


After a good snowfall, Rebel Girl and her little guy get up early and follow the tracks the animals have left behind. It's a bit of detective work that finds them crawling under trees and bushes and trailing the river as they trace their steps and try to identify them.



And now, a poem:

Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams


All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.



(Above, the Santa Ana River.)

Rainy day in OC

Lambrose Canyon Rd. this morning.

Irvine Valley College.

Modjeska Grade, this afternoon.

Cloud threatens to eat South County.

After the meal.

To see video of those special people in Ladera Ranch who gathered to pray for the CAPO school district, click here. Skip to about 2:20.

Gosh, if I didn't know better, I'd swear they were engaging in some kind of pagan ritual. Devil-worship, maybe. Could be.

I don't get it.

THE IMPORTANCE OF COW BELLS:

Go ahead. Revel in the excellent cow-bellitude. When the "Li'l Bastard" isn't crooning about "our country" (bleccch!), he rocks most excellently. Kenny Aronoff kills.

The original cow-bell wonderfulness. I remember it well. I was on Catalina Island, Cherry Valley Harbor, and that cow bell rang over the harbor on a warm summer night. Even then, I knew I was experiencing prodigious and cosmic cow-bellitude.

Yoo is “wrong, wrong, wrong”

     On Wednesday (Torture boy at Chapman) we referred to a Times article about the Bush Administration’s John Yoo (aka "Torture Boy") teaching at the relatively uncomplaining Chapman University in Orange, after having endured endless protests at Cal (Bush policymaker escapes Berkeley's wrath). 

     Today, the Times printed two letters regarding that piece, including one by our own Red Emma:

I am appalled that Chapman University has invited former White House lawyer John Yoo to teach its law students. With the painfully prevalent lack of ethics today, it is shocking that Chapman is clearly more concerned about publicity for its young law school than ensuring that its students are taught by professors of great achievement, guided by high ethical standards. The last thing we need are more John Yoos in America's legal system. 

—Johanna Dordick, Los Angeles 

There's something too easy in offering Berkeley as the singular (and stereotypical) community of resistance to Yoo. Orange County residents—UC Irvine staff and students—were similarly vehement, angry and (appropriately) rude to the Bush administration apologist for criminal behavior when he appeared on our campus. There's no need to harp on the now-clichéd environs of Berkeley to illustrate citizens expressing a consensus: Americans know that torture and violating international human rights law is wrong, wrong, wrong—and plenty are willing to shout about it, even in Orange County.  

—Andrew Tonkovich, Silverado The writer is a lecturer at the UC Irvine Department of English.

P.S.: John Yoo is Chapman’s Fletcher Jones Distinguished Vising Professor of Law. According to the university,

The Fletcher Jones Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law is selected annually from nominees and candidates who possess exceptionally outstanding credentials in legal education, and whose personal and professional lives reflect the highest ethical standards. [My emphasis.]

See also Torture memo author finds friends and foes at Chapman U (Matt Coker, OC Weekly)