Jury Duty

THE TIME ARRIVES, as it does every few years or so, when one has asked for and received the requisite number of postponements and actually has to call in and perhaps show up to assist in the judicial process that guarantees every person her or his right to a trial by their peers.

Yes, Rebel Girl has jury duty.

And not just any jury duty. Noooo.

She has been called to the Harbor Justice Center of Newport Beach.

Jury duty with a view, no less—and the option of eating out at some of the finer establishments that Orange County has to offer (though actually she plans to take her lunch, gobble it down in the car and spend the rest of her time at the Friends of the Library Bookstore in the Newport Beach Public Library where the pickings are great).

She does entertain an elaborate fantasy of being installed on a jury of a high profile trial (the Jeffrey Neilson case, perhaps?) which will result in being sequestered in the Four Seasons hotel, with cable TV and room service and strict admonishments to cut off all ties to the outside world. She hopes the hotel has a spa with as steam room and that the air conditioning isn't too cold.

Rebel Girl was instructed to call in and listen to a message on Friday and she did. The recorded message directed her to call back on Monday at noon – and see if her services are needed at 1:15 on that same day. Yes, she teaches from 11-1, so she'll dial from the classroom, mid-class, and see what her fate is.

All things considered, she is happy to serve. Rebel Girl is a girl scout in that way. Six years ago, in the first week of September of 2001, she served on a civil case in Santa Ana. Back then, most people she saw tried their darnedest to disqualify themselves. Rebel Girl was certain that the man she saw with his hands and feet wrapped in plastic grocery bags was sure to get bounced – but later in the week, she saw him marching along with another jury, his hands and feet still bundled in plastic.

Usually, simply stating that one works as a college professor is enough to be removed from a jury once the defense and the prosecution start playing poker with their recusals, but we'll see. Maybe she'll just try and work Erwin Chemerinsky's name into the proceedings and see what happens.

Last time, the case was moved along well, with a few disagreements and some surprising but entertaining drama during deliberations. Rebel Girl enjoyed the experience. Midweek, she discovered that she was pregnant and that the pregnancy, unlike previous ones, was viable. She was keeping that to herself though, on the advice of her doctor. Better wait and see. It's still early yet. But on that last day, Friday, as they were all walking out of the courtroom, people who would never see each other again, she matched stride with an older woman she had been friendly with during the week. A retired stewardess. A grandmother. I'm pregnant, she told her, I just found out. The woman stopped walking. That's wonderful, she said, good for you. Congratulations. They smiled, hugged, went on their way.

Rebel Girl was practicing, she sees now, just wanting to see what it was like.

****

FROM THE SOMEBODY OUT THERE LOVES REBEL GIRL DEPARTMENT:

Last week Rebel Girl received the gift of five CDs in the mail - the live recordings for five recent concerts by Lucinda Williams, each concert dedicated to one album in its entirety.

Yowza.

It's nice to have friends out there, especially ones who still go to concerts.

Rebel Girl used to see Lucinda Williams back in the day when Lucinda played fish restaurants in Culver City. She knows all the words to Pineola, including the verse that Lucinda doesn't sing anymore.

Lucinda's music meant a lot to her then, still does now.

That cool new high-tech campus in Tustin (part 2)

1. OK, so here's part 2 in my series about the SOCCCD's new "ATEP" campus in Tustin. I posted part 1 on Friday after visiting the new facility.

2. ATEP's administration building may be small, but it's pretty spiffy. Here are some pics from inside. Naturally, everything looks new—because it is new. The staff is terrific.

3. As one enters, one encounters computers for student use just off to the left. It's a nice atmosphere for work.

Check it out. Say "hey" to the gal at the desk for me.

4. This is some sort of conference room, I think. Someone explained it all to me, but, on Friday, after class, my mind is a sieve.

5. This blue gizmo is part of ATEP’s Center for Applied Competitive Technologies (CACT), which, according to the ATEP webite, "this year was designated a National Center for Photonics Education, a National Science Foundation Center of Excellence...The prestigious designation was awarded to thirteen centers across the U.S. that have committed to increasing the pool of well-trained technicians in optics and photonics by creating a secondary-to-postsecondary “pipeline” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students...."

6. No, it's not a vending machine. This gadget makes models. It's called a "3-D printer," but it really makes models, like that one you can see inside and that doohicky sitting on top. It's extremely cool to watch models slowly come into being in this contraption after having been created on a computer.

Students are all over this thing, of course.

7. This equipment is near the model-making gizmo. I dunno what to tell you. Students learn to make cool stuff, and then they get jobs somewhere.

And why the hell not?

LET'S GET ON BOARD.

Lemme change the subject for a second. First, some logical truisms.

When you’re evaluating something, some facts are relevant and some are not (to the question of the worth of the thing). So, for instance, the fact that, say, Senator Larry Craig is a hypocrite is relevant to his character, but it has no bearing whatsoever on the merits of his policies or philosophies.

The origins of a thing, too, are irrelevant to its worth. For instance, the founder of chiropractic (“medicine”) was a crackpot, a nut. But that fact has no bearing on whether chiropractic adjustments (of the sort he advocated) are an efficacious treatment for back pain.

This is all obvious, right?

“Guilt by association” is a similar fallacy: maybe Hitler—or was it his German Shepherd "Arsch mit Ohren"?—was a vegetarian, but that fact surely has no bearing on the merits or demerits of vegetarianism.

SO HERE'S THE THING. I say all of this because we in the South Orange County Community College District have this thing, this ATEP, and it is what it is as a facility and a potential campus.

I think it’s pretty exciting. No, I won’t be happy if the Young Americans end up camped here, but, even if they do, they’ll be a small part of something much bigger, and it all strikes me as exciting and forward-looking.

I could be wrong, but I think many of my colleagues are having trouble seeing all this—or at any rate, they’re having trouble seeing ATEP for what it already is and what it can be—because, of course, ATEP is “associated” with our spectacularly unpopular and loathsome Chancellor, Raghu P. Mathur and perhaps the current board, which is, well, Neanderthalesque. Flintstonian even.

But, as the Chancellor asserted recently, ATEP is here to stay. So we may as well make it work.

But what about process? Yes, absolutely, Mathur and crew have screwed that up. If one asks, what will ATEP be?, the answer really is: ATEP will be the outcome of “negotiations” that are occurring now, very much behind closed doors, between the private Money People and the District.

One day, a door will open, the Chancellor will emerge, he'll have a big smile on his stupid face and we’ll finally be told what ATEP is gonna be. Mathur will arrange to get awards for his labors. Maybe the Medal of Freedom. Maybe fabulous cash prizes.

That sucks, I know. But, in the meantime, we’ve got ATEP Jr., and it is what it is, and what it is is cool.

Those wacky Orange County Republicans!

.
1. TRUSTEE Tom Fuentes’ pal Chriss Street sure is turning out to be a corrupt rat bastard. Imagine that! 

Two county workers placed on leave: Two were involved in contract sought by Treasurer-Tax Collector Chriss Street for work on county building (OC Reg)

2. Tom used to mentor this guy, remember?

Ex-GOP activist faces new molestation charges: Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, a former aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, abused the boy at his Fountain Valley home, prosecutors say. (OC Reg)

Trustee Fuentes must be mighty disappointed in this young man. But at least Jeff is good to wet puppies!

3. Undoing an undoing?

UCI reportedly working on a deal to rehire Chemerinsky. (Times)

What? You think OC Repubs weren't up to their eyeballs in the unhire? We'll see, I guess.

See also:

●Rohrabacher, Baugh GOP Operative Charged in Another Man-Boy Sex Case
●NYT editorial: a bad beginning in Irvine
●Jeff Nielsen is a conservative guy
●Street under wider investigation

Hey, get a load of that cool new high-tech campus in Tustin! (Part 1)

I TAUGHT my 3-hour class this morning and then took care of some paper work. I finished up at maybe 2:30, and boy was I glad to leap like an idiot into the wild blue yonder of the weekend! I climbed into my Chrysler 300, and zoom!

I was talking to Bob Kopecky the other day, and he said I should drop by ATEP—that's the high-tech campus that just opened up in Tustin—and take a few pics. (ATEP is the Advanced Technology & Education Park, a campus of the South Orange County Community College District.)

He's mighty proud of it; he's its Provost. (We call 'im Park Ranger Bob.)

So I figured, what the heck, I may as well go over there since it was such a beautiful day. Plus I like to look at those big blimp hangers. I can never get enough of those things.

You can get to ATEP on Redhill—it's just off Valencia. Somebody's done a lot of work to clean things up at the old base. It used to be kinda post-apocalyptic: dirt, weeds, shitty buildings, toxic waste bubbling up from beneath the earth. (Well, not that.)

ATEP, whose cozy but shiny "phase 1" sits right along Redhill, looks modern and futuristic. It sometimes reminds me of the Borg. I worry sometimes that it's gonna X-ray me or transport me to Pluto.

Eventually, ATEP will be 68 acres of dazzling high-techery and whatnotery—plus a few of the old relics left over from the Marine era, like the little white chapel and the rusted pull-up bars of death. A nice contrast.

See the pic on the left? You can see, to the right, a mock-up of a vehicle that can actually drive across the country on one tank of gas! That's gotta be a big money saver.

Evidently, the "head" inside the cockpit is built around some ancient monkey skull or something, constructed with photons or electrons, but waddoo I know. I think it glows and bleeps.

There's all manner of high-tech whiz-bangery at ATEP. Even the parking lot is unusually convoluted, as if it were designed by Rube Goldberg or maybe the City of Tustin. I could do without that, actually.

I poked my head into one of the rooms, and GOOD LORD! It was filled with dozens of Mac Pros!

Now, I'm all Mac'd up myself, and so I know just how fine these computers are. They purr. They crunch and whoosh. I drool. You can take over the world from one of those, y'know.

As the kids say (and, frankly, I do wish they'd stop saying it), "sweet!"

PART 2 OF THIS SERIES will be a tour of the inside of ATEP. Hundreds of kids take classes at the campus (sometimes called the "Entity") already, and you wouldn't believe the great contraptions & gizmos they have to work with!

I'd keep on eye on those kids, if I were you, Bob.

TUSTIN'S THE DISTRICT: GRATUITOUS BUZZKILLERY:

P.S.: On the way home, I dropped by that big dumb shopping area to the southeast of ATEP—the "District," it's called.

So, OK, I do have a complaint. I think it's pretty rude to go to something that, for decades, has been known as the "biggest" or the "stinkiest" or whatever, and then to go ahead and build something right next to it that's even bigger or stinkier!

So what do those New Age sharpies at WHOLE FOODS MARKET do? They build a store that's even bigger than those hangers! I almost fell over tryin' to see the top of it!

Plus it's filled with nothing but New Age bullshit—you know: books with titles like Know your Karma through Asparagus, books by that ashole Andrew Weil, books about enemas and nuts & twigs, books by Shirley F*cking MacLaine. —Plus "organic" sprouts and oats and cow brains and fig bars.

I liked the post-apocalyptic wasteland better.

It Ain't Over Yet:L'affaire Chemerinsky

Over at her excellent and fiesty blog, Witness LA, Celeste Fremon unpacks the latest in the UCI-Chemerinsky furor - check it out. Fremon is a journalist and occasional instructor at UC Irvine.

All the expected players and more are there, including a cameo by LA Supervisor Mike Antonovich. (Damn! I thought I got away from that guy by moving south!)

At the end, Fremon asks: "why should the rest of us care that a job offer was tendered to a Duke University law professor, and then later withdrawn?"

Her answer: "Here’s why: Because when the worst kind of petty back room political maneuvering holds that kind of power over one of the state’s best—hell, one of the country’s best—public universities, then we all damn well better care."

"It was an Avalanche"

WHAT DO OTHER CAMPUSES DO when the hiring process is corrupted? When academic freedom and the integrity of the institution is attacked?

They organize.

Today the Los Angeles Times characterizes the situation at UCI as a "furor" (one of Rebel Girl's favorite journalistic nouns) and claims that the dismisal of Chemerinsky may delay the opening of the law school, scheduled for 2009.

An online petition, signed by faculty, students, staff and yes, fellow Anteaters, alumni can be viewed (and signed) here.

The petition is an open letter to Chancellor Drake and addresses him directly:

"...if the reports are true, as our institutional and intellectual leader, and as our representative, you have failed to defend the integrity of the university, its recruitment process, and the sanctity of academic freedom you have given voice to supporting in the past. We have no idea what pressure you came under from those promising to support the university financially or politically, but we have heard nothing of your public undertaking to stand up for the intellectual independence of the university, its hiring processes which weren’t allowed as a consequence to run their course, of academic integrity and of the principle of reasonable independence. It is this that disturbs us most deeply."

The letter closes with an appeal for Drake to "reconsider [his]position, and to reverse [his] decision thus to reinstate the process for Professor Chemerinsky’s appointment. Anything less is an attack on the integrity, reputation, and morale of faculty, staff, and students alike at the University of California, Irvine."

Meanwhile, Rebel Girl has been chided a bit on another blog for her tendency to characterize this incident in particular and county politics in general in a way that might be seen as Machiavellian.

Surely, it can't be that bad, the colleague on the east coast suggested.

We know better, don't we?

--From today's Los Angeles Times:

Although Drake has denied that he took action under pressure from conservatives, [Elizabeth Loftus, professor of psychology and member of the hiring committee] said Thursday that the chancellor told the committee during an emergency meeting Wednesday night that he was forced to make the decision by outside forces whom he did not name. A second member of the committee confirmed Loftus' account to The Times but asked to remain anonymous.

"I asked whether it was one or two voices or an avalanche, and the answer is that it was an avalanche," Loftus said. "But we are not supposed to capitulate to that in the world of academic freedom."

Optometry (Red Emma)

Posting for the Reb: RED EMMA

“Can’t tell the difference ‘tween a turkey & a provocateur.”

.from “Blame the thought, Cling to the Bummer”
by Allen Ginsberg

.THE FIRING or, I guess, unhiring of Erwin Chemerinsky finds Red Emma, Lecturer and union activist at UC-John Wayne, er, Donald Bren, er, Sperm-Mart, er, Irvine, getting calls from colleagues confiding their own UCI “Can you top this?" stories, most all of them most impossible to share officially, about administrators and department heads and deans.

.My own theory regarding this class of well-compensated Yes-men and women is that they are tested for that optometric condition called myopia, which is to say that the folks at HR take them into a room and stand them in front of an eye chart. If they pass it, they are thanked and returned to the classroom, but if they fail, they get a title and a parking spot and a big salary. If, that is, the candidate cannot see forward past the length of their own arm or backward as far as their ass, he or she becomes a school chair, dean or Chancellor.

.Michael Drake strikes me as sadly typical. With all that power, salary (reported on UCI webpage as $350k), not to mention a potentially strong community behind him (staff, however meek and quiet are, I think, mostly), he appears to have been psyched out, coerced, cooked his own goose, panicked or, perhaps, been set up from the start so that, yes, this morning on KPCC’s “Air Talk” the rightwing OC Register editor started the call for his removal.

.For the record, I see Drake as a Good Guy, a medical doctor, opposed to the odious Prop 209, who must have cribbed the eye chart, and by that I mean practiced failing because he imagined he could do right, make a difference, you know. Which makes it hard to understand how somebody who worked for UCOP and has been in the system, already eaten a lot of shit for the institution (medical scandal and more) couldn’t see this coming. A generous critique suggests that nobody can, to bowdlerize Mencken, go broke underestimating the reactionary politics of this funny little historically rightwing county run by a cabal of old school GOP kooks in our funny little state, with Democrats who cooperate with Schwarzenneger for their own political gain, allowing a Gary Miller, for instance, to keep his district in a quid pro quo and who don’t fight when the Guv vetoes a ballot measure on the war. Yes, the war. Bush. Alberto Gonzales. Sorry, I’m not gonna disappoint Dissent readers.

.This is about the war. For whatever weird reason, it was Chemerinsky’s LA Times commentary piece on Alberto Gonzales (albeit his other war, on death row federal court reviews) that Drake said—not the subject, but its “existence” (sic)—led to his decision. Connect the dots, paint by number, fill in the blanks, and there appears a picture of an academic in Orange County, Birchtopia, Reaganville, Nixonland, California taking on the national Republican agenda: killing people, whether in the criminal justice system or Iraq.

.Call me Mr. Reductio Ad Absurda, I don’t mind. The metaphor is the message here, and that the “libertarian” Register editor arrived there before me—calling for the removal of a stooge, an incompetent who happens to be, yes, a putative liberal and African-American—is only one step in front of the next conservative call for, say, Mr. Gonzales, who I hear is out of a job, as dean of Bren Law School. Or John Woo or, more insidiously, some other toady who failed the eye chart too.

Andrew Tonkovich