Dropping the F-bomb on students

The OC Reg recently reported that gun sales are way up in Orange County. How come? The reporter asked the gun-mongers at The Grant Boys in Costa Mesa and Army-Navy in Orange, and those guys claimed that their customers are afraid. They fear that President Obama will take away their right to bear arms. They fear “civil unrest” when the recession shifts to a depression.

So, naturally, they’re arming themselves.

As you know, there are lots of stupid people in the world, and we’ve got more than our share of ‘em right here in Orange County, which explains a lot. OC is, of course, a seriously red county, and so, during the recent presidential race, lots of OC’s gente estúpida embraced the notion that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.A. (There’s an OC preacher who’s suing somebody over that.) Then there’s the notion that Obama is a Muslim, and a socialist, and a terrorist.

I seem to recall that Huey Long once got people riled up against a political opponent when he accused the guy of living in “open celibacy” with his sister. Hell, I’m living that way right now. And I’m sick and tired of it, too.

Most stupid people aren’t literally stupid, of course. Mostly, they’re ignorant and willing to allow demagogues to fill the empty spaces in their heads with a simplistic and attractive worldview, no questions asked. So they’re sheep, not dodo birds, basically.

Stupid People may be simpletons, but they're also complex, ‘cause they’re simultaneously trusting and cynical. They have a child-like faith in their noisy demagogues—who instill in them paranoia and skepticism regarding everything excepting the Official Demagoguery. So they sound as hard-bitten and cynical as Dr. House, even though they’re actually as naïve and trusting as Dr. Cameron.

You can’t reason with these people. They may as well be literally stupid, for all that you can achieve arguing with them. That’s routinely revealed in the comments to this blog. Have you noticed?

Winston Churchill famously opined that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." The Stupid People demographic is always pretty large, and so it’s easy to see where Winnie was coming from. Some days, I think that democracy is the worst form of government period.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, now does it? People can avoid sheep-like behavior and think competently on their own (this entails a rejection of skepticism)—if you educate ‘em properly. Still, I don’t see how we’re ever gonna make much progress when society is so big and messy. Modifying the thinking and habits of a huge, heterogeneous population is difficult, maybe impossible.

If you’re like me, you are continually stunned by how hard it is to get even the simplest ideas across to our large population. “You can’t get AIDS from a doorknob.” —Remember that one? It took forever getting the doorknob idea across.

Every once in a while, I discuss the state of education in the U.S. with my students. That state is dismal, of course, and the signs and proof of abject dismaltude are everywhere. But when I clue my students in on this (I start by reading from the opening of "A Nation at Risk"), many of them look surprised. Or they think I’m just telling liberal lies.

How can that be? Don’t they read the paper or watch the Daily Show?

I don’t know what’s the matter with me. If anybody should be accustomed to Stupid People behavior, it should be me, ‘cause I’m a teacher, and a teacher is someone who makes a BIG FREAKIN’ POINT of explaining to students what they are required to do, who repeats that info endlessly, and who, at the end of the semester, is invariably overwhelmed by students who explain that they had no idea that they were required to do the writing assignments.


I’m in the thick of that right now. “You had to get 6 points out of 16 in the writing assignments. That's all. Just 6. You got 2. So you’re getting an F. That’s all there is to it.”

I hate having to say that.

At the start of each semester, I explain that, in a few months, I’m gonna be saying those very words to several of the students in the room. They all smile. “Not me, boy,” they think. So I say, “Yeah, some of you are thinking, ‘not me, boy.’ But it’s gonna be you, unless you listen to me now!”

They don’t listen. I say, “No really. I don’t want to give anybody an F, believe me. But look at things from my perspective. I’ve gotta do things to motivate you guys to do the work for the course, and this is one of those things. And if I tell you now that you’ll get an F if you don’t do the assignments, and I don’t actually give those Fs, then nobody will believe me in the future!”

Some students stare back at me like fish.

So I show ‘em a clip from Dr. Strangelove, when the good doctor explains the concept of deterrence and the idea behind the Doomsday Device: it’s “simple to understand... credible and convincing," says Herr Doktor Merkwürdigliebe.

I then explain that, when students fail to do the absolute minimum amount of work, they’ve gotta face consequences. “I can’t not mete out the promised consequences,” I plead.

Near as I can tell, none of this makes much of a difference. At the end of the semester, I’ve gotta drop the big one all over the place.

I’m thinking about escalating. Maybe I should pin notes to students’ shirts, explaining the requirements, the consequences of blowing those requirements off, in that stupid note, which, no doubt, will be read by no one.

Or maybe I should write warning tattoos, in reverse, on their foreheads. "Do the goddam assignments!"

It’s depressing. And, at the end of the semester, the predictable catastrophe surprises and amazes me anew, even though I’ve been here, in this bombardier’s station, dropping these bombs, a hundred times.

Yeah, I’m stupid too.

See Study Cites Toll of AIDS Policy in South Africa (aka 365,000 unnecessary deaths caused by a stupid idea)

P.S.: Gosh, I was driving earlier today and, on the radio, I heard a song from my youth. Somehow, it was devastating. I nearly had a panic attack. I'm not so hard-bitten myself, you know.

THE SEEKERS ~ "I know I'll never find another you"


Dr. Strangelove explains:

You know you're in Orange County when...

Pow! Bam! Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a new gun!:

Business is booming at gun shops around Orange County. “The first two weeks of November have been extraordinary,” says Randy Garell of The Grant Boys in Costa Mesa. “Sales are running about 60 percent over last November.” … “The reason I keep hearing is that people are concerned that their rights will be taken away,” says Tony Alvarez, gun department manager of the Army-Navy Store in Orange. … “We’re selling everything we can get our hands on,” says the Grant Boys’ Garell. “The other day, a husband and wife came in to buy Christmas presents. He bought a gun for her and she bought one for him.” There’s another fear at play, too: Fear that if recession turns to depression, civil unrest may follow…. (OC Register, yesterday.)

Rancho Rinconada de Los Gatos

Tiger Ann, pining after her mom, who returns in the morning.

Prowling this morning.

IVC's recent veterans' ceremony

Ditto.

PAC at left, Beefsteak at right, Vet's tents in middle.

My bro and Catherine.

Natalie.

Dorm room waftage

BEYOND SAD. OK, Irvine is a safe city—compared to other U.S. cities. So says the FBI, anyway.

Irvine is the safest city in America when measuring violent crime in cities with populations of more than 100,000, according to FBI statistics....

Irvine in 2006 had four homicides, 17 rapes, 50 robberies and 55 aggravated assaults, [an Irvine police officer] said. In 2005, there were two reported homicides, 17 rapes, 42 robberies and 90 aggravated assaults.... (FBI Says Irvine Is America's Safest City)

(The murder rate in the U.S. is 4.28 persons per 100,000. In Europe, it is much lower. For instance, in Spain, the rate is about one fourth what it is in the U.S. (See.) You'll recall that, a few years ago, trustee Tom Fuentes objected to a Saddleback College "study abroad" program to Spain in part owing to concerns about student safety.)

Linda Park was a freshman at Irvine Valley College in 1995 when she was brutally murdered by two young men in search of loot in her parents' home. (The men were recently convicted of murder and sentenced.)

Today’s OC Register (Justice served for murdered Irvine girl, but memories linger) offers a sad follow-up.

THESE COLLEGE KIDS TODAY. It’s awfully expensive attending college these days. At private colleges, tuition can be ridiculous.

Today’s Reg has a story (Tuition-money pot sales land Chapman student in jail) about one enterprising—er, desperate—young man who coughed up his college coin by selling cannabis:

…According to court testimony, William Paul Laaser, 20, told Orange police officers that he was selling marijuana to "raise money for tuition." The university's tuition for the 2008-09 academic year is about $47,000.

Laaser was arrested Oct. 27 when university public safety officers responded to a complaint of an odor of marijuana coming from Laaser's dorm room.

Sgt. Dan Adams of the Orange Police Department, said about 40 grams of marijuana, a scale, a ledger detailing purchases, numerous plastic baggies and $800 in a locked trunk were found in Laaser's room.

Laaser pleaded guilty Nov. 11 and began serving his jail term Monday. Laaser's driver's license will be revoked for a year, he will have to perform 45 days of community service for Caltrans or do other physical labor and will be on probation for three years, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office.

Well, at least the kid has been mastering some practical skills.

CON-FUSION. Today, physicist Bob Park notes that

It's been almost 20 years since the March 23, 1989 announcement that cold fusion had been discovered by two chemists at the University of Utah [Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons]. By June, cold fusion was an object of ridicule.

A small band of embattled defenders retreated to holding annual conferences of like-minded scientists to which skeptics were not welcome.

The story now seems to be entering a new chapter. Believers have begun showing a willingness to confront skeptics, submitting papers to open meetings of major scientific societies. They no longer use the term "cold fusion," preferring the less contentious "low-energy nuclear reactions" (LENR) to describe their field….

However, the use of LENR has been undone by referring to "excess heat" as the Fleischmann-Pons effect. This only serves as a reminder of the outrageous conduct of the university administration and the incredibly sloppy research on which the claim was based.

This year, there is great excitement over the work of Yoshiaki Arata, a respected professor at Osaka University. In May Arata demonstrated the production of excess heat to an audience of 80, but there have been many such claims over the years and until it is replicated by someone outside the LENR community and a plausible explanation is advanced, it will change few minds.

The Tiger Ann diaries

No news is bad news

We try to keep on top of things here at Dissent the Blog, but sometimes it ain’t easy, cuz, sometimes, there’s not much to keep on top of.

BOARD FRUSTRATION. Near as I can tell, the SOCCCD board of trustees is very frustrated with faculty right now. Evidently, the problem concerns faculty union and Saddleback College Senate leadership. Don’t know much about the union situation, although it’s a sure a bet that it concerns contract negotiations and union Prez Lee Haggerty.

I’m told that the senate is viewed by trustees as pressing for an excessive amount of reassigned time.

Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur to the rescue, I guess. “Please Raghu! Even though you are both a creep and a boob, we rely on you to protect us from faculty!”

As you know, it is at the December meeting (this year, on the 5th) that the board elects its officers for the coming year. Right now, Don Wagner is president of the board, and it seems likely that he will continue for another year.

But know this: Tom Fuentes and Bill Jay are the only trustees who have never served as board president. I doubt that Bill wants the job. If Tom wants it, he’s got the votes.

Yikes!

STUDENT NEWSPAPERS. Once in a while, I check out the local college student newspapers, most of which are lame. The Saddleback College/IVC Lariat, however, is among the better papers. It’s online site is usually pretty lively.

Not right now, though.

On Tuesday, the Lariat posted about “Juicy Campus”: Juicy Campus takes online gossip to the dark side. JC is a predictably offensive student gossip forum that has grown in popularity around the country, although, evidently, it’s not yet grown grape vines through our particular colleges (and parks).

Last Wednesday, OCC’s Coast Report reported on the effects of that school’s budget crisis—“including a seriously scaled back winter intersession, a cut of more than 100 classes in the spring and the possible evisceration of its summer session….” But that’s old news.

Yesterday, the CR’s hot news was the “subsiding” of a rash of vehicle break-ins.

The seldom stinging Fullerton College Hornet reports that there are new cabinets in the Fullerton College faculty lounge. Yup.

On the other hand, it also includes a conversation with NOCCCD Chancellor Ned Doffoney, who, as you’ll recall, was the President of Saddleback College in the mid-90s. (Sitting Down with the Chancellor.) The article traces Doffoney’s career, starting in the Louisiana swamps.

Curiously, his years in the swamps of Saddleback College are left unchronicled! We are told about his move to a Los Angeles trade school in 1982—and then, suddenly, he is sipping coffee with a friend in 1998, and he hears about an opportunity to leave his “gated community” in South OC in favor of them bayous back home. Saddleback College isn’t even mentioned.

(Below, I've attached an old article describing a typically swampy event during Doffoney's last year as SC President.)

CSU Fullerton’s Daily Titan seems to be experiencing a particularly disastrous lull. At it’s website, I clicked on "news" and found a week-old story about a lecture on cyber-bullying (Panel says cyber-bullying is a crime).

The UCI New University’s top story is about a presentation about immigration last week by professor Bean (Langson [Library] Host to Immigration History).

I guess things get a little slow around Thanksgiving.

Hope you have a good one.

June 5, 1997

Saddleback College cans newspaper adviser
Student paper has been critical of district board

Kathleen Dorantes received word May 20, without warning that she would no longer be the adviser to the Saddleback Valley [sic] College newspaper, The Lariat.

She was told the decision came from the office of the college president, Ned Doffoney, and Doffoney had given no reason, Dorantes said last week from her home in Riverside.

Some sources at the Mission Viejo college...say the move was politically motivated. The student paper has been critical of the majority of the college district's board of trustees since the election in the fall.

The faculty member appointed to take Dorantes' place as adviser, Lee Walker, is an outspoken supporter of the board majority.
...
During one of the years she was the adviser, 1996, the paper won one of the top awards in the state for community college newspapers, the General Excellence Award from the California Journalism Association of Community Colleges.
...
Doffoney said in a telephone interview that the decision had been a "contractual" one. He said that any full-time faculty member can bump any part-time faculty member at any time. Doffoney said that Walker had approached him and indicated that he wanted to advise the newspaper.

Walker could not be reached for comment.
...
When asked about reasons for the change or reasons that the college president, rather than an immediate supervisor, would make a decision about a faculty teaching assignment, Doffoney said, "I think this conversation has gone about as far as it can," and indicated he did not want to comment further.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner:"my shining loaf of quietness"

It's Thanksgiving. Rebel Girl's son has donned his "Indian vest" made of brown paper grocery bags (his read "Lucky" on the inside) and his headress of bright construction paper feathers and paraded with his peers in front of parents to sing a song about an unhappy turkey.

Rebel Girl and family will have three Thanksgivings: one on the day in West Covina (lots of Alvarezes); one on the next day (just her and her fellas); and then another on the weekend when Special Needs Mama and her family visit for an overnight in the yurt. They plan to eat, to hike, to make music perhaps.

So - she's been baking. This year's theme is bread. She likes the faithfulness of the yeast and how the house smells like real people live it in. She likes to think that her son will remember this smell and her, that she's making a memory, a good one.

Today's poem is one she's shared before, written by Peter Everwine:

Night

In the lamplight falling
on the white tablecloth
my plate,
my shining loaf of quietness.

I sit down.
Through the open door
all the absent who I love enter
and we eat.

~~~~~~~

Happy Thanksgiving!