Whatever happened to humility?

Oil fire, Orange County, 1909

From David Brooks’ column this morning: High-Five Nation.

On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared [on the show “Command Performance,” broadcast on the radio], along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.

“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.
…
Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.

This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

On the bright side, here's a fine discussion of UFOs (that's full of scientific humility):



Logicians talk about the "appeal to ignorance" fallacy. It works like this:

Nobody's disproved the existence of Bigfoot. That's evidence that Bigfoot exists!

OR

Nobody's proved the existence of Bigfoot. That's evidence that Bigfoot does not exist!

Wrong on both counts.

Sleeping under a bush at the Old County Courthouse

The home of the old "Fullerton News" (a century ago)

UH-OH, TOM 'N' DON ARE PALS! 

First, former OC GOP Chair Tom Fuentes has endorsed fellow trustee Don Wagner for Assembly.

Actually, that sucks. It means that Tom and Don are pals again. And that means they’ve buried the hatchet--in our heads--and so Raghu Mathur won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. (But what do I know.)

This news is in today’s OC/Red County blog, where contributor Allan Bartlett explains that he received the following press release from the “Don Wagner for Assembly campaign”:

Fuentes Endorses Wagner For 70th Assembly District
Longtime GOP Leader's Support A Strong Boost Among Conservatives 

...South Orange County Community College District President, and candidate for Assembly, Donald Wagner has announced the endorsement of Tom Fuentes, Chairman Emeritus of the Republican Party of Orange County.



"Don Wagner has been a tireless advocate for conservative causes and candidates and his professional credentials are tailor-made for him to be an effective advocate for Orange County and Republicans in the State Assembly," said Fuentes. "He will be a champion for our values and Republicans will be proud to have elected him." 



"Tom Fuentes is one of the most principled conservatives I have known and I have been fortunate to serve with him--and learn from him--on the South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees," said Wagner.

"Tom is a respected voice and I am proud to have his support for my campaign for Assembly."



Tom Fuentes is a conservative activist and former Chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County (1990-2004). Fuentes oversaw the Orange County GOP as it became America's most Republican County. He is currently a Trustee for the South Orange County Community College District....

Trolley in Tustin, c. 1890

TOM 'N' CHRIS ARE PALS TOO

Meanwhile, over at the moribund LA Times, Steve Lopez (a thief! he stole my nickname for Mike Duvall, “Spanky”!) blathers about, well, Mr. Mike “eye-patch underwear” Duvall, yet another staunch conservative (who, as it happens, was endorsed by our very own John "Incompetent Civil Servant" Williams):

'Spanky' Duvall's conduct is grounds for a good thrashing

After a few humorous observations, Lopez commences discussing Duvall’s replacement:

Potential replacement candidates were popping up so quickly, you had to wonder if one of them was involved [in releasing the infamous video to the media].
My personal favorite replacement would be Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby, 59, who in July married a woman in her early 30s.

Of course he did!

Norby is one of Fuentes’ pals, a real right-winger. Perhaps you’ll recall the slick maneuver that Fuentes and pals attempted when “Dot” Fortune resigned from our board (gosh, she remained trustee even though, some alleged, she lived elsewhere in the state!), opening up a trustee spot between elections. At first, Tom and his GOP pals grabbed Norby’s brother Eric (who works at Claremont McKenna College, which has close ties to the Claremont Institute, on whose Board sits Tom Fuentes) for the gig. But then the faculty union figured out that they could challenge this thing, and, anyway, Eric smelled a rat (i.e., yet another lowlife Fuentean machination), and so he bolted, cheese or no cheese. In the end, the union managed to get their man, Bill “Poppin’” Jay on the board.

Whew!

Forest Avenue, Laguna Beach (c. 1905?)

Surely you know how the rest of this is gonna go. Naturally, if Fuentes cozies up to a politician, that politician will be all staunch and conservative, prayin’ and pledging, kicking illegal orphans, and preachin' the "sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman." Meanwhile, in reality, some very impure stuff is bangin’ around in his closet:

As the Orange County Register reported:
"It is the fourth marriage for [Norby,] the 4th District supervisor, who last year came under fire for claiming $340 for a weeklong stay at a hotel during the summer of 2007, when his previous marriage was on the rocks. That same week he was also found sleeping under a bush at the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana."



Look, nobody's perfect.

That’s for sure. Especially not one of Tom’s Republican pals. Dang!

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "Meanwhile the world goes on"

Vice president Joe Biden visited the World Trade Center at Ground Zero last Friday marking the eighth anniversary commemoration of the 9/11 attacks.

Biden read Mary Oliver's poem, "Wild Geese."

Oliver won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for her collection American Primitive (1983) and the 1992 National Book Award for New and Selected Poems (1992). For her 40th birthday, one of Rebel Girl's colleagues gave her a copy of the Oliver book, The Leaf and Cloud - she cherishes it.

Here's the poem.


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Elitist prattle

Recently, a member of the English department acknowledged that I do have a “passing knowledge” of English and grammar and such. Boy did I feel special.

I do love all those wonderful controversies concerning grammar and syntax—you know, whether to noticeably split infinitives, whether to start a sentence with a big “but,” etc.

Here’s one of my pet peeves. Logicians know that “begging the question” is the fallacy committed when one assumes what one is supposed to be establishing. But some illiterate doodle-head decided to use “begging the question” to mean “forces the question upon us” a while back, and the world hasn’t been right since.

I’ll leave it to Jack Lynch, author of an online Guide to Grammar and Style, to explain:

Begging the Question.

It doesn't mean what you think it means. Begging the question — from the Latin petitio principii — is a logical fallacy; it means assuming your conclusion in the course of your argument. If you say "Everything in the Bible must be true, because it's the word of God," you're taking your conclusion for granted. If you say "The defendant must be guilty because he's a criminal," you're doing the same. It's a kind of circular logic. The conclusion may be true or false, but you can't prove something by assuming it's true.

This is very different from raising the question, though people are increasingly using the phrase that way. It's sloppy, and should be avoided. Here, for instance, is a piece from The Times (London), 30 Nov. 2004:

The behaviour of ministers is a matter for prime ministers, who appoint and dismiss them. But this begs the question of who should find out what has gone wrong on behalf of a prime minister.

No it doesn't. It raises the question; it prompts the question; perhaps it forces us to ask the question; maybe this question begs for an answer. But it doesn't beg the question.

"What are 'studies'?"—Register readers do not disappoint!

Dana Cove, 1960

Life among idjits: according to OC Reg readers, English, history and philosophy are just "empty bling"!

EARLIER TODAY, I noted Gary Robbins’ post about the UCI faculty who have signed a petition calling for a “walkout” on the first day of class. (See 73 professors join call for faculty walkout at UCI)

Robbins oddly notes that 50 of the signers are from the “soft” sciences, which he takes to be “the humanities and social sciences.” (Um, no.) Included among the latter areas are history, English, philosophy, and some fields that, in some circles, are associated with liberal or progressive agendas: Chicano studies and Women’s studies, etc.

I thought it might be interesting to read the Register readership’s response to Robbins’ post.

—Yes, I know. Entering into the Reg’s comment zone is a bit like entering a sleazy bar in a crummy part of town late at night. You don’t do that expecting to run into brainiacs.

I fully expected Reg readers to bash the so-called “soft sciences,” as Robbins oddly defines them. (It seems to me that the fields within the Humanities do not claim to be “sciences,” except in an archaic sense of that word.) Using that term was like waving a red piece-o-meat.

Sure enough, the right-wingers did not disappoint:

anonymous says:

yeah. They [i.e., petition signers] are angry that, “…The entire Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Division which houses American Studies, Asian Studies, Cognitive Science, Development Studies, Environmental Sciences, Latin American Studies, Media Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Religious Studies, and six other hugely popular major and minor programs is facing likely closure….” [who’s he quoting?] along with other grievances.

I strongly agree that our US Citizens should be open to other cultures and peoples. But I am not against closing down these departments. There will always be Liberal Arts Colleges that will offer these majors, but let’s not try to do everything at our universities. we [sic] simply cannot afford it. Maybe encourage foreign study abroad a little more aggressively for that sort of exposure.

Bob says:

…do we need any more graduates whose employment will mostly include saying ‘and do you want fries with that’?

It’s time to shut down un-necessary, especially ’soft’ Departments, like any well-managed business would do - and not just in tight financial times.

Marc960 says:

What are “studies”?

Women’s Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, African American Studies,

—These can all be combined into “Racists, Bigots and Chauvinist Studies”.

I still don’t get why there are no “What is an American” studies. It seems to me someone [sic] best start teaching that before it is just another chapter of a History book.

Major Variola (ret) says:

About 50 of the signers are from the humanities and social sciences, the so-called ’soft sciences.” They include faculty from such programs as sociology, history, English, comparative literature, Chicano studies, Women’s studies, philosophy and languages.

These are not sciences, they are sinecure jobs for useless “scholars” that Calif. can no longer afford. Empty bling is out.

History, English, and Philosophy are "empty bling"? Guess so!

Evidently, that last one was too much even for Gary Robbins, who responded:

Sociology is a field of science. W. E. B. Du Bois was a sociologist. So was H.G. Wells. And Alexis de Tocqueville. And Alvin Toffler. And Margaret Mead. Michelle Obama majored in sociolgy, among other subjects.

My God, doesn’t Robbins realize that his list of sociological heroes are likely on the Major's list of Unamerican commie homo atheistic rat bastards?

(Wells and Toffler are sociologists? Well, sort of. M. Mead was an anthropologist; was she ipso facto a sociologist? Don't think so. Robbins is a knucklehead.)

There’ve been a few classic Register rude right-wing rants:

debaser [!] says:

Overpaid leftist punks want to stage a walkout. Cretins are lucky to have a job. Not a damn speck of sympathy for any of them. Ivory tower morons.

Yeah! (I've got to admit: I do enjoy this fellow's no-nonsense, stogie-chompin' writing style!)

Naturally, some commenters seem to be reading from the Fuentes/Wagner/Williams Bible of Fiscal Staunchitude, which advises that a college should be run like a business:

ocdisgust says:

Hmmm, 30 [sic] professors, UCI needs to cut classes, staff furloughs…Maybe these 30 should be the first to go. That should alleviate some of the budget mess. I believe in freedom of speech/expression, but when you are an “Employee”, you have an obligation to the employer and when you choose to neglect your responsibilities to that employer (ie. [sic] being in the class providing the education they pay you for), you should face the consequences. Any employee in any other company would face consequences for skipping work; so should they.

I don't know about you, but I'm really gonna miss the OC Reg.

But not its readers.

Images from my childhood

VILLA PARK IN THE EARLY 60s

A couple of pictures of the neighborhood (Villa Park/Orange) of my childhood. My family bought oranges at the Santiago packinghouse for many years--starting in the early 60s. This pic looks c. 1961.

Nearby Wanda Rd. I just barely remember that little store.

Got these pics from the OC History Roundup blog.

Photo taken in 1957. My family didn't move to OC (from British Columbia) until two or three years later.

This is downtown Orange, 1920s—long before my time. But I did live near there c. 1990 in a house built in 1903.

This, too, is before my time: Peters Lake (near Irvine Park), 1949. Evidently, in January of that year, it snowed! (Got these next ones from the OC Public Library archive.)

OK, this one's just weird. El Toro Rd. 1970

I cropped it to maximize weirditude

Newport Pier, turn of the century

The aggregators are coming! The aggregators are coming!

Structural disintegration of the Academy

I read an article in this morning's  Washington Post by law professor Zephyr Teachout that neatly expresses an increasingly common view about the future of higher education. If this view is correct, we’re now entering a Brave New World. (A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges.)

(What is a Zephyr Teachout?, you ask. Well, according to her Huffington Post biography, Zephyr Teachout “teaches Election Law at Duke University School of Law. She is the former National Director of the Sunlight Foundation, Director of Online Organizing for Howard Dean's Campaign, and Researcher at the Center for Investigative Journalism in Bosnia-Herzogovenia”.)

Excerpts:

Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which "going to college" means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet….

The real force for change is the market: Online classes are just cheaper to produce. … Distance-learning technology will keep improving. Innovators have yet to tap the potential of the aggregator to change the way students earn a degree, making the education business today look like the news biz circa 1999….

This doesn't just mean a different way of learning: The funding of academic research, the culture of the academy and the institution of tenure are all threatened.

Both newspapers and universities have traditionally relied on selling hard-to-come-by information. … A student can already access videotaped lectures, full courses and openly available syllabuses online. And in five or 10 years, the curious 18- (or 54-) year-old will be able to find dozens of quality online classes, complete with take-it-yourself tests, a bulletin board populated by other "students," and links to free academic literature.

But the demand for college isn't just about the yearning to learn – it's also about the hope of getting a degree. Online qualifications cost a college less to provide. Schools don't need to rent the space, and the glut of doctoral students means they can pay instructors a fraction of the salary for a tenured professor, and assume that they will rely on shared syllabuses. Those savings translate into cheaper tuition, and even before the recession, there was substantial evidence of unmet demand for cheaper college degrees. Online degrees are already relatively inexpensive. And the price will only dive in coming decades, as more universities compete.

…
Taking the newspaper analogy one step further, college aggregators will be the hub of the new school experience. In the world of news, the aggregators have taken over from the newspaper as the entry point for news consumption. Already, half of college graduates attend more than one school before graduation. Soon you'll see more Web sites that make it easy to take classes from a blend of different universities.

Because the current college system, like the newspaper industry, has built-in redundancies, new Internet efficiencies will lead to fewer researchers and professors. Every major paper once had a bureau in, say, Sarajevo – now, a few foreign correspondents' pieces are used in dozens of papers. Similarly, at noon on any given day, hundreds of university professors are teaching introductory Sociology 101. The Internet makes it harder to justify these redundancies. In the future, a handful of Soc. 101 lectures will be videotaped and taught across the United States.

When this happens – be it in 10 years or 20 – we will see a structural disintegration in the academy akin to that in newspapers now. The typical 2030 faculty will likely be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments, using recycled syllabuses and administering multiple-choice tests from afar.
…
So how should we think about this? Students who would never have had access to great courses or minds are already able to find learning online that was unimaginable in the last century. But unless we make a strong commitment to even greater funding of higher education, the institutions that have allowed for academic freedom, communal learning, unpressured research and intellectual risk-taking are themselves at risk.

If the mainstream of "college teaching" becomes a set of atomistic, underpaid adjuncts, we'll lose a precious academic tradition that is not easily replaced.

A friend found this -- 37th in healthcare: