Expert Says Edison Misled Regulators on San Onofre Changes (NICK GERDA; Voice of OC)

The Death of the Lecture (Anamaria Dutceac Segesten; University of Venus [blog])

U. of California Settles Lawsuit Over Raid on Office for Leftist Causes (Chronicle of Higher Education)

CSU may pull cash grants to half its grad students (Nanette Asimov; San Francisco Chronicle)

Knuckle-dragger Friday

• Creationism lives on one side of political aisle (Martin Wiskol; OC Reg)
If you believe God created humans as they now are, you’re not going to find much company among Democrats or self-described progressive Christians.

• Assemblyman Don Wagner Alarmed By Prop. 65 Lawsuit Abuses (R. Scott Moxley; Navel Gazing)

• Wry and Subtle Jesting? Not Here, Knucklehead (Manohla Dargis; New York Times)
‘The Three Stooges,’ From Peter and Bobby Farrelly

Henri the Existential cat

click HERE

Use of pepper spray was “objectively unreasonable”

Plenty of Blame to Go Around
UC Davis pepper spray report faults administrators, police (Inside Higher Ed)

By Allie Grasgreen

     Many parties were at fault for the now-infamous November pepper spray incident at the University of California at Davis, including the chancellor and other administrators who failed to properly evaluate the protest situation or plan for its dispersal, and the police who did not follow protocol and whose use of pepper spray was “objectively unreasonable,” an independent investigative panel has found.

     Communication breakdowns and procedural neglect snowballed into a confusing and poorly planned police operation, the panel's report says, and ultimately led to one officer casually pepper-spraying students at (much too) close range during a nonviolent protest. The students, who sat across a walkway, refused to move as campus police officers attempted to clear out the Occupy encampment.
     “Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly,” the report states in its very first sentence. “The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”….(continued)

California Dreaming

Writing yesterday in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hilzik dreams big and challenges us to revive the California dream that once was available for many.

Let's bring back the idea of a free UC education

Tuition increases are threatening to place a University of California education out of the reach of working-class and middle-class students.

The son of a railroad worker, Earl Warren came from a family keeping a desperate finger hold on a working-class existence at the turn of the last century. Yet when he left high school in Bakersfield in 1908, there was no question where he was headed: to Berkeley and a free education at the University of California.

There he proved an indifferent student scholastically but an enthusiastic absorber of "the new life, the freedom, the companionship, the romance of the university," Warren recalled years later. "It was like being in wonderland."
...
The roll of Californians who rose from modest circumstances to enrich our lives and our society after receiving a taxpayer-supported education at the University of California — or Cal State or the community college system — is too long to enumerate here. They're scientists who made world-altering discoveries, literary artists, composers and musicians, political leaders of city, state and country.
...
The principle of free tuition for state residents was deeply ingrained in UC from its founding in the 1860s and reaffirmed in the 1960 master plan for public higher education, which acknowledged the university's role as a driver of economic growth. Raising the instructional costs for students, the master plan said, would negate "the whole concept of wide-spread educational opportunity made possible by the state university idea."

So here's a radical proposal: As tuition increases threaten to place a UC education out of the reach of working-class and middle-class students, let's reinvigorate the notion of a free UC education.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

*

A student's perspective: at the Writing Lab

Below is a short essay written by one Melanie Hoshall for a Writing 1 class.

A High Rate of Distraction

     There are people sitting on the floor working on laptops. No, this is not the latest venue for the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's not a protest, although maybe it should be. There is just no room for these people to sit at the crowded hardwood tables shared by up to six students at a time. There are no available chairs for them to sit on.
     This is the IVC Writing Lab and it is simply inadequate to student demand.
     Aside from a lack of seating, there's also the noise. There are constant "excuse mes" as elbows are bumped or a bag knocks into someone's chair when a person squeezes down the narrow aisles. Whispered conversations accumulate into unintelligible babble. Add the conversations with the teachers who are there to help students, and the room is a living study of distraction.
     I fall into the "easily distracted" group. If two people are talking at the same time near me, I have to watch the mouth of the person talking to me to understand what he or she is saying. For me, the noise in the Writing Lab makes writing there like trying to write in the middle of Times Square on New Year's Eve.

     While I acknowledge that my concentration ability is impaired, that does not get the Writing Lab off the hook. It is one seriously uncomfortable place to study, even for people who aren't easily distracted. I worked on fulfilling my time requirement in the Lab by plugging in my earphones and listening to soothing music while I was writing. My impairments also allow me to use one of the two workstations reserved for challenged students and a butt-friendly chair on wheels placed in the Lab. Why on earth a person should have to be challenged to get such common-sense seating is beyond me. Those students sitting on the floor may be more comfortable than the ones sitting on the hostile hardwood chairs. No wonder people avoid the Lab until the end of the semester. Okay, to be fair, they would do that anyway. But the Writing Lab does not have to provide so many excuses.
     On the other hand, the average age of most students is less than half of mine. They are also a generation already living life at a high rate of distraction. They appear unable to walk, drive, eat, or go to the bathroom without their cellphones. The conditions in the Writing Lab might not even register with them since there’s no app for it.
     Those students sitting on the floor of the Writing Lab are trying to sneak in their required hours before they are discovered and tossed out for being a fire hazard. Maybe they are not aware they have cause for protest. After all, it's the end of the semester and it's only for a week or two. Who would they complain to and who would care if they did?

   – Melanie Hoshall

The passing of time leaves empty lives

Waiting to be filled

The passing of time

Leaves empty lives

Waiting to be filled

I'm here with the cause

I'm holding the torch

In the corner of your room

Can you hear me?

And when you're dancing and laughing

And finally living

Hear my voice in your head

And think of me kindly

Chandos retrieves his hat (from the ring)

K. Schmeidler

     Two brief factoids regarding Ray Chandos, who was recently nominated (along with Kathy Schmeidler) for President of the IVC Academic Senate. A friend reminds me that, on two occasions in recent years, Ray submitted dissenting reports to accompany the official accrediting reports. Gosh, does anyone have copies of these things?
     I’m also told that, this morning, Ray wrote the senate requesting that his name be withdrawn from the list of nominees for President. Evidently, he was unaware of Schmeidler’s nomination when he nominated himself (or permitted someone to nominate him). Now that he is aware, he withdraws and (I’m told) believes that Kathy will make a fine President.