Hand sanitizer. Right.

Today, members of the campus community (at Irvine Valley College) received an email. It included a brief letter from IVC Police Chief Will Glen.

In the letter, Chief Glen reminds us that the college is drafting a plan to prepare for an outbreak of the Swine Flu. He offers some prevention advice from the CDC—cover your mouth, wash your hands, stay home if you’re ill—which, he explains, is displayed on posters all over campus.

Then comes the fun part:

we are issuing individual bottles of ‘hand sanitizer’ to each employee as a reminder to wash your hands.

I checked my mailbox and, sure enough, it contained a bottle of hand sanitizer.

It would be ridiculous to suppose that one can combat Swine Flu with bottles of hand sanitizer. But it is not ridiculous, I suppose, to offer these tokens as a reminder.

I guess.

I asked one of our scientists if the hand sanitizer works. “Yes,” she said, “but you’ve pretty much got to keep using it every time you touch anything.”

Oh.

Yeah, but it’s a reminder, a reminder to keep washing your hands. As I understand it, you’ve pretty much gotta keep doing that all day to do any good.

Hand-washing. I bet it would be more effective to wear a button that said, “Screw Swine Flu.”

Why always the silly gestures? I don't mean IVC and Swine Flu. I mean us, always, all the time.

“We cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid.”

"Nazi youth rally" at the Balboa Bay Club

Earlier today, I received an email from a reporter informing me that he had just received a press release concerning Don Wagner and Tom Fuentes. He joked that, according to the release, Fuentes is “hosting a ‘Wagner for Assembly’ Nazi youth rally at the Balboa Bay Club on Wednesday night.”

He asked me for some background on these two.

I mentioned all of this to Rebel Girl, who then found the following “upcoming event” listed at the OC Republican Party’s website:

Wednesday, 9/30/09

5:30 PM

Special Event

Campaign Kick-off Party For Don Wagner for Assembly

Featuring Special Guest Tom Fuentes, Chairman Emeritus, Republican Party Of Orange County

Where: Balboa Bay Club & Resort, Newport Beach

You are cordially invited to a campaign kick-off party for Don Wagner, candidate for State Assembly, with special guest and Master of Ceremonies Tom Fuentes, Chairman Emeritus of the Republican Party of Orange County. Reception will be held on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 5:30pm at the Balboa Bay Club on the patio at Duke's. To RSVP or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact Desiree at 949-794-7204 or desiree@dezandassociates.com.

This, of course, is further evidence that Don Wagner has sold his soul to the devil, aka Tom Fuentes. Nothing good can come of it. Frogs will soon fill the sky, pumpkin juice will replace the seas.

Rebel Girl also found this announcement:

Friday, 10/16/09
5:00 PM
Special Event
A Poolside Birthday Party Smoker
In Honor Of Tom Fuentes

Where: The Radisson Hotel, Newport Beach

You Are Cordially Invited To



A Poolside Birthday Party Smoker



In Honor Of



TOM FUENTES

Chairman Emeritus of the Republican Party of Orange County


Senior Fellow, The Claremont Institute



With Special Guests



BRUCE HERSCHENSOHN


Former California Republican Nominee for the United States Senate



And



SIR ELDON GRIFFITHS


Former Conservative Party Member of the House of Commons of the British Parliament



At The Opening Night Of The


2009 Western Conservative Political Action Conference 


...



The Radisson Hotel

...


Complimentary Cigars


No Host Bar


Music 


Regnery Books Door Prizes 


...


Attire: Business Casual



RSVP: conservative@westernCPAC.com

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "burning the world to live in it is wrong"

If Rebel Girl were teaching this semester, rather than sabbatical-ing, she would probably share this poem in a creative writing class and fashion an assignment inspired from it, using a speech as the form and premise.

From the September 28 edition of The New Yorker:



A Speech to the Garden Club of America
by Wendell Berry

(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;

There are so many outcomes that are worse.

But I must add I’m sorry for getting here

By a sustained explosion through the air,

Burning the world in fact to rise much higher

Than we should go. The world may end in fire

As prophesied—our world! We speak of it

As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit

Of temporary progress, digging up

An antique dark-held luster to corrupt

The present light with smokes and smudges, poison

To outlast time and shatter comprehension.

Burning the world to live in it is wrong,

As wrong as to make war to get along

And be at peace, to falsify the land

By sciences of greed, or by demand

For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify

The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.

But why not play it cool? Why not survive

By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?

Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens

By going back to school, this time in gardens

That burn no hotter than the summer day.

By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,

By goods that bind us to all living things,

Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.

The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,

Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger

Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.

A creature of the surface, like ourselves,

The garden lives by the immortal Wheel

That turns in place, year after year, to heal

It whole. Unlike our economic pyre

That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,

An anti-life of radiance and fume

That burns as power and remains as doom,

The garden delves no deeper than its roots

And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

~

In-Goo we trust

Evidently, the Reg’s Gary Robbins is paid by the word. Tonight, he asks: Is it wise for Chapman to recruit aging star professors?

About two years ago, Chapman University recruited Vernon Smith, who’d won the Nobel Prize in economics. Last year, Chapman hired Yakir Aharonov, who has been named by Thomson Reuters as one of the seven most likely people to win the Nobel in physics this year….

Smith, 82, and Aharonov, 76, are still active, but they’re in the twilight of their long careers. Major research schools, like UC Irvine, rarely hire eminent figures who are over the age of 60….

We’d like to know what you think of Chapman’s recruiting practices.

Really? You wanna know?

Inside Higher Ed has a story today about political correctness: A Tale of Two Posters.

At Tufts University, … Two weeks ago, In-Goo Kwak, a freshman studying international relations and an immigrant from South Korea, put up a series of posters around his dormitory parodying the campaign poster of Alice Pang, another freshman of Asian descent who was running for the Tufts Community Union Senate. Kwak was not actually running for a student government position, but posted the parody next to Pang’s at the encouragement of his dorm mates….

Pang’s poster included the campaign slogan, “small person, big ideas,” with the exclamation “hurrah!” next to her portrait. Kwak’s parody poster looks strikingly similar in design to Pang’s and includes the slogan “squinty eyes, big vision.” Next to Kwak’s portrait is the word "kimchi!" – a traditional Korean dish. Additionally, where Pang's poster read "vote on Thursday," Kwak's said, “Prease vote me! I work reary hard!” in deliberately broken English….
…
“Though this was a satire of [Pang’s] poster, this was not a personal insult in any way,” Kwak said. “I thought it would be funny to satire the oppressive environment of political correctness at Tufts. I think it’s unhealthy that people feel afraid to express their views. One of the Asians on my hall saw the poster and showed it all over campus and eventually the director of the Asian American Center contacted me, but not one of the students who found this offensive contacted me directly. Instead, they had someone else do it.”

Linell Yugawa… did send an e-mail to the entire Tufts community denouncing Kwak's parody, which she called “racist.”

“Many Asian/Asian Americans and individuals of other racial backgrounds have been angered, hurt, and offended by these posters,” Yugawa wrote in a letter co-signed by directors of other groups at the university, such as the Latino Center and the LGBT Center. “The posters not only mocked an authorized campaign poster, but used negative and racist stereotypes that correlate with the discrimination and dehumanization of Asians. These posters go beyond affecting one individual or group, but offend all who have an understanding of how racist stereotypes impact our lives.
…
The Tufts administration had a more reserved response to the matter, preferring to let student groups facilitate the discussion Kwak’s poster has stirred.
…
Kwak … said that he has since apologized to Pang, explaining the purpose behind his poster, and that she graciously accepted his apology. Pang did not respond to requests for comment.
...
“People are so afraid to talk about this or to express their support of my poster because they’re afraid of getting in trouble with one of the groups on campus,” Kwak said. “And this is happening on a college campus, where people should be comfortable sharing their views. I mean, I was [comfortable]. I put my name on the poster in big letters. There’s this taboo against the discussion of racial issues. I’m not going to be afraid to talk about them, and I’m not going to back down.”….

The consolation of cats

TigerAnn late this morning. She insisted on visiting. Then she insisted on going outside, where she hunted flying insects and lizards. I let that go on for a while.

TigerAnn is sitting nearly on my keyboard even as I type. She thinks she can wear me down. Not so. She can be bold. Occasionally, she places her paw upon my keyboard, wreaking digital havoc.

Max, nearly two years ago. He is now an adult and he's taken an interest in biology.

Max again. A close friend of Curious George, I'm told.

The title of this post is an allusion to Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy

I really like the Glenn Beck impersonation. And Keith Morrison. Whoa!

Is there intelligence in America? Inconclusive

Physicist Bob Park is surging with peevitude again. “Last week,” he writes,

Senate hearings were held asking whether cell phones cause brain cancer. Brian Walsh, writing for Time, described the outcome as "inconclusive." A collective groan rose from the nation’s physicists.

A groan? Whence groanage?

Bob reminds us that, 17 years ago, a fellow named David Reynard appeared on Larry King Live, explaining that he was suing the cell phone industry for causing his wife’s fatal brain cancer. Naturally, Larry found Reynard’s complaint compelling.

Larry, albeit likable and a snappy dresser, is a knucklehead. Reynard was plainly committing a fallacy, an old chestnut called “post hoc ergo propter hoc.” In Reynard’s unmicrowaved mind, his wife held that phone against her head and then got cancer. So there you go.

“That’s logic!”

Bob points out, however, that

all known cancer agents act by breaking chemical bonds, producing mutant strands of DNA. It would be like suing me for hitting someone with a rock thrown across the Potomac River. …[M]icrowave photons can't break chemical bonds. Not until you get up to the near ultraviolet, about 10,000 times more energetic than microwaves, are photons capable of causing cancer.

Bob links us to an old editorial of his (Cellular Telephones and Cancer (2001)) in which he reported that

A beautifully designed, nationwide, epidemiologic study of cell phone use and cancer has been carried out in Denmark. … The study included all of the nearly half a million users of cellular telephones in Denmark during the period from 1982 through 1995. .... The results "do not support the hypothesis of an association between use of these telephones and tumors of the brain or salivary gland, leukemia, or other cancers." Other recent epidemiologic studies of cellular telephone use and cancer … although less powerful, report similar findings.

OK, so here’s the thing. Cell phones suck, they really do. And people should stop yapping on them while driving.

But there’s no reason whatsoever to think they cause brain cancer. There is no mechanism to explain why they would cause cancer. Heck, there isn’t even any epidemiological evidence that they cause cancer.

Nevertheless, last week, there were Senate hearings about cell phones and cancer.

Idjits.

So Damn Happy (Red Emma)

(POSTED by Rebel Girl but WRITTEN by Red Emma!)

The title of today’s Red Emma post is the name of a favorite Loudon Wainwright song. You should hear it. Maybe Chunk or Rebel Girl can teach me how to link to songs on this here blog.

Because I didn’t want to risk getting too happy about today’s walk-out, strike, picket line and joyous labor demonstrations at UC Irvine, I purposely tuned in — as I occasionally do to make sure that I stay with the equilibrium of constant anger and predictable disappointment — to the odious “Frank Pastore Show” on right-wing religious radio station and all-purpose huckster headquarters KKLA 99.5 FM. The silly topic was Frank’s usual fare, this time about how the answer to too much pernicious premarital sex among Christians, especially young men and women (go figure) was to revisit the marriage trend. Stay with it. Here it comes: Frank, brilliant thinker that he is, suggested that, yes, Christians just get married earlier so that, you know, they can make the beast with two backs in the perfect sight of Yahweh.

Perfect, indeed, and I was almost where I need to be, recalibration-wise. I waited for the other shoe to drop, because of course he’d have to bring up dowries and old men buying young girls and marriage as a vehicle of tribal property ownership, right? But soon arrived an advertisement — these always better than the show itself — and, reliably, I got my necessary dose of sobering real-life socio-existential realignment. Frank invited all of us listeners to a “prison ministries” event featuring felon (“obstruction of justice”) and shitbag Chuck Colson, Nixon’s hatchet man. The event is co-sponsored by, yes, just what I was waiting for, Christian Lawyers of America. That did it. Those four words, and I was fine again. Suddenly all was back where it needed to be, everything right (wing) with the world, and so I switched over to public radio KPCC just in time to hear Adolfo Guzman-Lopez’s reporting from the events at UCI.

Now I felt better. And by that I mean worse. Hooray.

Disorientation
At the rally between the flag poles (California Bear Republic, Stars and Stripes) on the steps adjacent the Chancellor’s rose garden, I was thrilled to distribute buttons and union literature and pass around to friends and colleagues, political comrades and a few students brand-new copies of the Radical Student Union’s (RSU) nifty anti-manual, the UCI Disorientation Guide. And, yes, friends, there is now a Radical Student Union at UC Irvine. This is to my knowledge the first such guide available on campus, and certainly the first radical anything in some time. You should get a copy. It’s fun.

I was also thrilled that so many students, faculty, staff turned out to support the UPTE strike. I was thrilled that the UPTE strikers marched around and yelled. I was thrilled that my own Lecturers and Librarians unit was well-represented in our spokesperson, who offered a righteous piece. Maybe I am easily thrilled. (See above, for regular antidote to unwelcome thrillingness.)

More Disorientation
Anyway, I chatted briefly with Law School Dean Erwin the C. He took a union button and continued being surrounded by young, handsome, smart, apparently progressive first-year young women and men law students at the new law school that Bren built. I reminded all of them to attend next week’s American Library Association Banned Books Week “Read-Out” at the Student Center Terrace. The rally started. The nut started yelling. There is a mentally ill man who shows up for every event I seem to have something to do with. Maybe we should agree, for everybody’s sake. I, Red Emma, will cease organizing events if you, Crazy Dude, will not come to them. I am not sure if he is even a student. Today he stood and shouted “No unions,” which is a weird thing to yell at a bunch of people in unions except that he wasn’t making a statement about their existence but, naturally, against their existence. Everybody knows this because he also yelled, helpfully, “Cut taxes,” so that maybe he was less insane than just your average Libertarian Fox News-loving OC Republican. Same thing, right? Ha, ha.

The Actual Rally
I missed most of it, as I had to run to class at 12:15. Reports from others attending suggest the numbers swelled to seven or eight hundred. On my way down Ring Road I counted at least five different so-called Christian groups, everything from Campus Crusade to Christian Koreans. I am an asshole, so I stopped and gave them all fliers for Banned Books Week “Read-Out.” I stopped, briefly, at a fraternity booth, all the young men dressed in their matching t-shirts and standing in front of the scary letters with their arms crossed as, a hundred yards away, actual real life was occurring. Did I mention I am an asshole? I went up to each of them and asked if their fraternity, Hubba Bubba Rubba if I read it right, would be interested in endorsing the event and would they consider reading out loud from one of the historically banned, censored, challenged books, say, The Catcher in the Rye or Beloved?

I think it was the great, late Utah Phillips, activist and Golden Voice of the Great Southwest who said, famously, “You’ve got to mess with people.”

In today’s paper Gary Robbins of the Register so underestimates the size of the crowd today — who was marching, and who they were — that I suspect he might have been at an altogether different event, perhaps the rally by Hubba Bubba Rubba and the other “Greeks” in favor of intellectual freedom, civic literacy and mutual aid.  - RE

(photo by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez of KPCC)