essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with ucla

I've been remiss. In no particular order:

Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett. Hey, it's a Discworld novel. It does what it says on the cover. I was never big into Discworld in its heyday, and I'm still not. The best parts, as is often the case, are little humanist asides. Chosen by work book club

The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum. Really a fascinating nonfiction look at the development of forensic science in the 1920s and 1930s in the New York coroner's office, bringing a professional scientific eye to something that had been slapdash at best previously. Also an interesting look at various poisons. Each chapter is devoted to a particular poison and there's a wealth of historical detail on famous criminal cases and horrific industrial accidents and mishaps. Very good.

19th century interlude...

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), by Jerome K Jerome: Three upperclass twits go on a boating holiday by mistake. Hilarity ensues. There are some laugh out loud moments, and it's generally amusing in a Dave Barry-esque breezy way. Two n-words appear as landmines in the middle. Anyway a sample:

[Travelling with cheese in a close railway carriage] And then they both began sniffing, and, at the third sniff, they caught it right on the chest, and rose up without another word and went out. And then a stout lady got up, and said it was disgraceful that a respectable married woman should be harried about in this way, and gathered up a bag and eight parcels and went. The remaining four passengers sat on for a while, until a solemn-looking man in the corner, who, from his dress and general appearance, seemed to belong to the undertaker class, said it put him in mind of dead baby; and the other three passengers tried to get out of the door at the same time, and hurt themselves.

...

Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

...

Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George’s, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh. And the more I looked from George’s wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.

---

Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson: The book that brough so many Midwesterners to California in the late 19th century, a romance in Southern California as Mexico gives way to the United States. Race prejudice from white Americans to Mexicans to natives. Miscegenation. Hidden treasures. Missed connections. Horse thieves and gunplay. Plenty of tragedy. I'm not sure it really presents a pleasant picture that should attract people, but there are a few lyrical passages of description of mustard fields and hills and whatnot that really are part of the SoCal landscape and may have felt exotic in Dubuque cornfields.

Back to a more modern century

Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus: Female scientist in the 1950s has really bad experiences at UCLA, pretty bad experience at a Lawrence Livermore-esque lab, finds and loses love, has a second act as a TV cooking/chemistry host, and then a rushed final act where vengeances and come-uppances come up. Enjoyable, but a few cheats and gimmicks and dropped plot threads. On the last point, I'm thinking particularly of the host stating she's an atheist on her live TV show in 1960. Although there's a bit of a flap, the book trundles on and takes the express train to the finale without fully dealing with that.

That Librarian, by Amanda Jones. A Louisiana school librarian thrust into prominence when she stands up for a public library (not school library) being attacked by censors. She is vilified by some of the townsfolk, and ultimately sues a couple of the worst for defamation. She's be the first to tel you she's no saint or superhuman figure, and she's right about that. What I think is both charming and yet detracts from her reliability as the teller of her own tale is how much she indulges in some score-setlling with some of the folk in her own small town. It's petty and yet dish-y. There's some "I won't name any names, but everyone in my town will know exactly who this is." No, really:

Another huge disappointment to me was a local elected official whom I had thought was a friend. I will call her Katie, although people in my community will know the person I am talking about. I’m not bringing her up to settle a score—at least, I hope I’m not. I’m including her so that you know the whole story.

...[different person below]

I almost came unglued and wanted to ask her who was she to quiz me about religion, morals, and agendas when she had a very public affair while she was married, to a police officer who was also married, and both of their marriages ended in divorce because of it. I kept thinking that she had a ton of gall.

But on the good side, the book does do a good job of telling people how librarians deal (within the system) with challenges to books, and why that's probably an adequate and professional way to handle things, and the public can have its say. (And there's no need for grandstanding and running off to lawyers and politicians to start passing laws.)

--

Space Chantey by RA Laffery: A tall-tale science fiction-y retelling of the Odyssey. Bonkers and genius in parts, but a little too bonkers. If Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius is NOT BONKERS ENOUGH for you, this might be perfect.

A UCLA law prof traces the history of corporate rights in America.

The book starts a little slow, but gains steam as we move away from antiquated entities like the Bank of the United States and closer to Citizens United and Hobby Lobby.

Not that I'm a great legal scholar, but I have no problem with a corporation being a fictitious 'person' for legal purposes. But it seems clear that certain rights should be reserved to people people. The overall history is one of corporations getting more and more rights -- and possibly too much at the present time. There were two major threads that I saw:

#1: The extent to which the law should 'pierce the veil' and treat the rights of the corporation as the same as the rights of the people that make it up. While the arrow drifted back and forth over time, it seems that the current situation is where the people behind the corporations get the best of both worlds. If it comes to liability, the people are protected and only the corporation can be sued. If it comes to rights, suddenly the people can exert them (as the owners of Hobby Lobby assert their company itself has religious beliefs and religious rights that correspond to their own beliefs and rights.

In some cases, this ambiguity is not necessarily automatically evil. In one case a corporation composed of black investors was allowed to rent a segregated space because the corporation was not black. In another, the NAACP was black enough to sue for racial discrimination.

#2: What sort of rights corporations have, as opposed to people people. For a long time there was a distinction (wrong, I think) that corporations had property rights, but no liberty rights. I don't see how 'freedom of the press' can only be an individual right. Maybe it was different when newspapers were just Ben Franklin personally setting ink to paper, but nowadays all newspapers are corporations. How could they not have access to freedom of the press? And so it was ruled in cases involving Huey Long and Louisiana newspapers. But from this necessary (in my view) extension of liberty rights to corporations, it has been a slide toward giving corporations the whole farm. So much so that now they can use their deep pockets to express 'speech' in the form of superPAC donations.

A point that Winkler makes is that we often hear about the women's rights struggle, or civil rights struggle, but no one talks about the corporate rights struggle. But to be sure there was one, and it leaned on these other struggles a great deal.

Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, when a scholar set out to identify every Fourteenth Amendment case heard by the Supreme Court, the justices decided 28 cases dealing with the rights of African Americans—and an astonishing 312 cases dealing with the rights of corporations. At the same time the court was upholding Jim Crow laws in infamous cases like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the justices were invalidating minimum-wage laws, curtailing collective bargaining efforts, voiding manufacturing restrictions, and even overturning a law regulating the weight of commercial loaves of bread. The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted to shield the former slaves from discrimination, had been transformed into a sword used by corporations to strike at unwanted regulation.

A little snippet of California history:

On the justice’s next trip to California, Field and his bodyguard, Deputy Marshal David Neagle, were having breakfast at a train stop in Lathrop, about 70 miles due east of San Francisco, when Terry snuck up behind the justice and struck him. Neagle jumped up and shot Terry twice, once in the head and once in the heart, killing the former judge instantly. It was then discovered, however, that Terry was unarmed, and California authorities arrested both Neagle and Field for murder. To this day, Field remains the only justice ever arrested while serving on the Supreme Court, much less for a crime as serious as murder.

Another reminder of how the Republican Party has changed since the days of Lincoln (or even McKinley). immigrant voter reachout efforts:

Although state committees had traditionally managed the local campaigns, even for presidential candidates, Hanna centralized them all under his authority in order to be “the general staff of the whole army.” He reorganized the RNC’s executive offices and introduced an improved system of bookkeeping. He opened a branch headquarters in Chicago, closer to the midwestern voters whose support McKinley would need. He created the first nationwide advertising campaign to market a presidential candidate and produced over 100 million pieces of campaign literature printed in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Hebrew to appeal to immigrants.

School fighting for the right to be integrated:
...Berea College in Kentucky had moral [reasons to go to court]. At the time, the college, which was organized as a corporation like one of the earliest corporate rights litigants, Dartmouth College, was the only racially integrated school in the South. After Roosevelt’s fateful dinner with Booker T. Washington at the White House, Kentucky lawmakers hardened their segregationist resolve and passed a law prohibiting any school from having a racially integrated student body. The college challenged the law on various grounds, including interference with its right to choose its own students. It was unconstitutional, the college argued, to prohibit “the voluntary association of persons of different races” absent compelling reasons.

Justices had somewhat more 'political' lives in the past:
Hughes had to resign from the Supreme Court to run [for President!]. For all his intellectual and prosecutorial gifts, however, Hughes was a poor campaigner and, in an upset, lost by only a few thousand votes to the incumbent Wilson. The lesson of his failed candidacy—that the judicial temperament is ill-suited to the rigors of the type of modern, commercial-style campaign first envisioned by Mark Hanna—would discourage future Supreme Court justices from running for national executive office. (William O. Douglas came closest in 1940 and 1944 when he was considered for vice president by Franklin Roosevelt.) Losing the presidency and a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court within months of each other, however, did not seem to faze the gifted Hughes. Like a cat with nine lives, he would go on to serve as secretary of state to two presidents and, in 1930, would be appointed again to the Supreme Court of the United States, this time as chief justice.

This case was about proselytizing in a 'company town', but obviously has some application (I think) to current companies that want to exclude certain sorts.
Although Black recognized that private property owners usually have the right to exclude whomever they want from their property, the “more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general,” the more the owner has to respect the constitutional rights of the public. Here, Chickasaw’s business block was “accessible to and freely used by the public in general.” Because Chickasaw was a town—even if it was really a company town—it could not silence religious minorities.

The world could use more Congressional committees humiliating people interfering with witnesses:
In 1966, Gillen sent out agents to look into [Ralph] Nader’s personal life, to see if the crusader was into “women, boys, etc.,” and to determine if he liked “drinking, dope” or anything else scandalous.11 When Morton Mintz of the Washington Post reported that Nader was being tailed, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee, was outraged at the apparent harassment of a congressional witness. He demanded GM president James Roche appear before the Senate, where the humiliated car executive was forced to apologize repeatedly.

Of the many things one could blame Rehnquist for, annoying pharmaceutical commercials are not among them.
“The logical consequences of the court’s decision in this case are far-reaching indeed,” warned Rehnquist. Not only would the court’s ruling inevitably “extend to lawyers, doctors, and all other professions,” it would also lead to “active promotion of prescription drugs, liquor, cigarettes, and other products.” In a prescient passage, Rehnquist predicted that pharmaceutical companies would soon be hawking their drugs directly to consumers: “Don’t spend another sleepless night,” he predicted the ads might say. “Ask your doctor to prescribe Seconal without delay.”

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/965647.html

A 1968 collection of essays on the the Tough Guys of 30s fiction by diverse authors, primarily academic (including Carolyn See of UCLA (Extension at the time) - her dissertation was on the Hollywood novel, and her essay here explores the well-populated cross-section of Hollywood and tough guys). I picked it up at an estate sale on a whim.

Probably the best of the bunch and a good primer on the topic is "The 'Black Mask' School" by Edgar-winning UCLA Professor Philip Durham, focusing on the origins and contents of the eponymous pulp magazine.

Some essays are insightful, others veer off into academese, others display a surprising distaste for the whole topic:

"Although the novel is atrociously written, with ... a tone I can describe only as illiterate archness, it does contain some of the important elements of gangster fiction: an Italian hero, an unbelievable amount of brutality ..., quite a bit of very rapid and decidedly unexciting sex, a Robin Hood sort of romanticism, and some fairly knowledgeable accounts of the methods of criminals."

Of a different novel: "Chase apparently took all the elements he found striking in gangster fiction and magnified them as far as his imagination and the censors would allow; the result is one of the rarest of rare birds, a truly horrible book."

One interesting insight that caught me eye is the epigraph to an essay on Hammett, quoted from Angus Fletcher's Allegory: "[The 'daemonic agent'] will act as if possessed ... He will act part way between the human and divine spheres, touching on both, which suggests that he can be used for the model romantic hero, since romance allows its heroes both human interest and divine power. His essentially energic character will delight the reader with an appearance of unadulterated power. Like a Machiavellian prince, the allegorical hero can act free of the usual moral restraints, even when he is acting morally, since he is moral only in the interests of his power over other men. This sort of action has a crude fascination for us all; it impels us to read the detective story, the western, the saga of space exploration and interplanetary travel."

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/950375.html

So there's been a bit of a kerfuffle.

The enigmachat email list has, over the years, died down in frequency to near moribund levels. But it perked up again with the campaign and questions about ballot initiatives. I gave my opinions. And there was a little back and forth. And then Darnell stuck his nose in with his usual flat-affected poorly-expressed stupidity. Now, I've only met Darnell in person a couple times, and nothing of much note occurred, but most of his email conversation has been repugnant and poorly thought out and expressed, as was this instance. So, because for me, he is only an object of disdain, detestation, and occasional humor, I tried to elicit further commentary from him, hoping to hear him express more poor, repugnant opinions for the edification of all (i.e. so that everyone would know he's an idiot with repugnant views).

But things took a turn.

thefayth went off. "I am deeply distressed by the email I received today on the EnigmaChat mailing list by Mr. Darnell Coleman that continues a cycle of inappropriate statements and behavior over the last 5 years." [my emphasis]

For better or worse, this message hit me before dawn, before coffee, and the first couple responses I saw firmed up my impression, also influenced by certain whispers and gossip, that this was not just about ideas and words, but behavior. And then I fucking went off.

There was a blinding flash of crystal clarity that, although I saw Darnell as an object of ridicule with stupid ideas, and that (only in comparison, mind you) I could be Vol-fucking-taire in amusing myself in showing him up... in actual fact, he was causing harm to people. And so:

Thanks, Faith.

I detest Darnell. I have only met him once or twice, so most of my interaction has been online. But that has been quite enough to last a lifetime.

His opinions are usually offensive, and always poorly thought out and expressed.

Current leadership will have to decide whether his poisonous contributions to the club require action within the guidelines of the group.

I am sensitive to the issue of viewpoint discrimination. I wouldn't want him to be removed simply for holding, or even expressing, unpopular beliefs. But it may well be that his behavior has reached a point that necessitates action.

Looking back, Enigma has from time-to-time had its own little basket of deplorables. From the painfully socially inept, to the gropy, to the political morons, to the religious bigots, to the anti-religious bigots (hi!).

The (rarely used) solution has generally been to encourage the deplorables to 'self-deport'. Make it clear that many people in the club don't want them there. And maybe the best way to make that clear is for many people to actually express it to him.

For the sake of our inboxes, people should write to Darnell personally. However, it might be useful as a record if you could also post a comment in Faith's post to the Enigma Facebook group, so that the powers that be can gauge the sentiment of the members.

But while I have the floor...

Darnell... go away and don't come back. I don't want you in my club. Your negative presence distresses many members and detracts from their experience. I fear you may be a psychic vampire who derives some sick pleasure from distressing others; if so, please find help. Or at least find some other group to infest, because the villagers here are sharpening their stakes. If not, just go already.

I realize (both before and after coffee) that this was an extreme and extrajudicial step. But it was also clear to me that the judicial process had been tried, and those who had complained had received no satisfaction. I do feel for the people in leadership of the club, who are in a difficult position. But I mouthed off.

And pretty soon it was clear that the leadership was taking this seriously, and I tried my best to shut the fuck up, and let them work.

But the response to my incendiary post, and a few like it, was fascinating to me.

>>***: I think using a public forum to do this is unjustifiable and unnecessary, and I don't want to be a part of it.

>Thank you for saying that, ***. I agree fully that such an extremely public discussion is, at the very least, unkind.

Aye ***, well spoken sir.

My visceral reaction to the middle comment was: "Absolutely. Yes, it was unkind. I would be mortified if I was accidentally that unkind, no-- rude, to someone. This was calculated and intentional."

But the weight of these comments coming together in a row finally gave me some insight into what it is like to be 'gaslighted' to use the common parlance.

Maybe I was wrong for backing up Faith. Maybe going through official channels was the best way to deal with it. Maybe I was wrong to be intentionally and publicly rude to Darnell. Maybe this is a witch hunt, and for once I'm the torch-bearing idiot.

Then

alpiyn dropped a nuclear bomb. As much as I was feeling gaslighted for picking on a moron who had done nothing worse to me than be a moron, how much worse or more alienated would people feel who had actually been harmed by this moron?

Now, I'm an old fart. And there's a new generation that's taken over. And that's as it should be. But I find it strange that I have (ok, had!) this idea that the younger crowd are much more up-to-date on this shit than the old fart brigade. We old farts roll our eyes at, "Do I have your explicit consent to nibble your left earlobe?" And we old farts who adore the First Amendment are a bit leery of the new guard's desire to curtail unpleasant speech. But I had this idea that the little pupal SJWs of today are out trying to make 'safe spaces' for everyone to enjoy. And at least in this case, it turned out to be a bunch of crap.

But at least I was right about the fuckdoodly First Amendment cuntborking.

When the official response came, part of it was this.

1) Many of these grievances spawn from online interactions and statements from this individual. In particular, many of them come from threads in the enigma-chat emailing list that is primarily populated by older alums of the club. The individual has been removed from these lists, as well as blocked from this group. That being said, it must stated that some in the officership were unaware of the existence of this list, and we believe that many of the current members who attend weekly meetings were also unaware of its existence. In light of this, we wish to formally disavow the enigma-chat list and leave it in the hands of the alumni. The enigma-chat list will remain as an opt-in option for all members, but we will not be responsible for its content. The transition of moderator responsibility shall take place in the coming week.
2) As for the individual’s continued membership in the club, we have yet to reach a verdict. We are speaking with our advisers on the best course of action to take to avoid repercussions.

Now again, I realize the leadership is in a tough position, and everything does have to be done in accordance with the guidelines (as I called for in my original rant), and this may take time. But I still think it's sad that the old farts on the email list get unceremoniously shitcanned, while judgment is reserved in the case of the malefactor. To be fair, this message was released before alpiyn unleashed hellfire.

It's also interesti.. no, infuriating, that some of the messaging has been that all of the complaints have been about just ideas and words. But Faith's message does mention behavior. My message explicitly protects ideas and expression, but draws the line at behavior. Again, I hope that the official response, when it comes, takes into account whether it was merely expression of unpopular views, or if it was behavior that created a hostile environment.

But getting back to one of the shortest of the many soapboxes I've stood on in this rant, enigmachat is too full of the free discourse of ideas and poopoo words to be a part of what the club wants to be in this day and age.

So in conclusion...

Fuck you in your fatherfisting cloaca!

/mic drop

Some weeks back, I think

therrin started a thread about SF/noir detective fiction, and I recalled George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails and its sequels. The Wiki page mentioned a detail of which I was unaware: "Effinger started work on a fourth Audran novel, Word of Night, but died before that work was completed. The existing chapters of Word of Night are now available in the posthumously published Budayeen Nights, along with some other Budayeen and non-Budayeen short stories."

And so, a little ebaying, and here I am with an ex-library copy of the Golden Gryphon edition of Budayeen Nights. The foreword and story introductions are provided by Barbara Hambly, and they are (in addition to being useful and insightful) occasionally uncomfortably frank about his problems with alcohol and drugs, which he used to combat the physical and mental pain in his life. In volume 2 of things I didn't know, Hambly and Effinger were briefly married near the end of his life.

Despite that depressing lead-in, it's still delightful to hang out with Marîd again in his usual haunts, in and around the events of the existing novels, and also in one story set long after those events. Other stories don't feature Marîd, but are clearly in the same world, including the Nebula and Hugo winning "Schrödinger's Kitten" (which struck me as being merely great, rather than award-sweeping) and "King of the Cyber Rifles," which has more to offer than just the cleverness of the title.

"The City on the Sand" from 1973 is less interesting as a story than as a look into the proto-Budayeen, inhabited by proto-Budayeen characters and Effinger's stand-in, Sandor Courane. It helps to draw the line from what Effinger was up to in the 70s to When Gravity Fails. And the other bookend is a peek into the unfinished fourth novel, with what counts as a short story to set things in motion.

I had the great fortune to meet Effinger briefly, and express my admiration for his work, when I was a lowly gofer, helping out at the 1996 Nebula Awards, which were held at the Queen Mary. And while we're name dropping, Barbara Hambly was kind enough to come to the very first EnigmaCon back in 1987.

Subtitle: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

It tells the story of a Quaker student at Brown who spends a semester at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 2007. OK, yes, it's a bit of a stunt, but at least it's an interesting one, and Roose definitely throws himself into the role, a lot more so than, say, Jason Rosenhouse in Among the Creationists. Roose enrolls at Liberty and presents himself as a Christian (At Liberty, "Christian" is synonymous with 'born again Christian') and (awkwardly) fakes up a recent conversion story to explain his presence (and why he has so little knowledge that he would flunk Sunday school for six year olds).

In short he comes to, generally, like the students and staff at Liberty, and a little Stockholm Syndrome sets in I think, and he finds himself simultaneously defending them, and disapproving of their (fairly common) homophobia and the one-sidedness of some portions of the 'education'. He even comes to have some appreciation for Jerry Falwell. And in "you can't make this shit up", he scores a one-on-one interview with Falwell for the school newspaper, gets praised for it by Falwell himself in convocation (I mean, what's not to praise, it was a puff-piece in the Liberty newspaper; the hard-hitting exposé uncovered the fact that Falwell had a peach Snapple every day at 3pm, which he slammed down in 6 seconds). A few days later, Falwell's dead, and this Quaker mole has published the last print interview Falwell ever gave, which comes to have a life of its own as it is reprinted in the memorial for the funeral.

I have once again abused the highlight feature of the Kindle...

( if you click here, I'll reward you with Larry Flynt's parody ad featuring Falwell that led to a Supreme Court case )

I got word that Professor Gerald Larue passed away recently at the enviable age of 98. There's a certain irony, I think, in the first president of the Hemlock Society living so long. I can't claim to have really met him, but I did bump into him at a debate on evolution/creationism between libertarian creep Mike Shermer and liar for Christ Duane Gish, 25 years ago at UCLA.

Larue was an interesting fellow. An early life of faith led him to study the bible and to profess biblical history and archaeology at USC for many years. But by that point, he had become decidedly skeptical.

One particular stunt stands out, and it's hard to untangle, since so many stories tell it out of order.

In 1985, a certain George Jammal wrote a letter to creationist Duane Gish, announcing that (after many travails) he had obtained a piece of Noah's Ark. Many, even in the creationist camp, had doubts, but...

In the early 90s, when Sun International Pictures wanted to make a documentary about the ark, Henry Morris of the Institute of Creation Research, gave them Jammal's name.

Sun's documentary, "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," which included Jammal's claims, aired on CBS.

Larue declared the whole thing to be a hoax.

Sun International Pictures doubled down. Quoting Talk Origins:

The secondary defense consisted of four parts: (1) That Sun had examined Morris' interview with Jammal. (2) That Sun had conducted their own two-hour audio taped interview looking for inconsistencies in Jammal's story. (3) That Sun compared the two interviews and found them to be consistent with each other. (4) That Sun gave Jammal's interview tapes to psychiatrist Paul Meier, who pronounced Jammal credible. By late September, Sun added a fifth defense: (5) That Sun had Jammal's hand-drawn map of Ararat and his expedition routes examined by Ararat expeditioneers who "assured us that it could not have been drawn by anyone who did not have experience with the mountain."

Reaction from CBS and the ICR was similar: "CBS, Sun, and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) set out to control the damage to their credibility by defending the program against the criticisms of Larue. Since Jammal was continuing to defend his story, at first the three organizations went on the offensive against Larue. CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky stated that "There was clearly a hoax perpetrated ... we're not sure whether it was on Sun International and CBS or whether it was on Time magazine." A press release from Sun called it "sad and unfortunate that Dr. LaRue [sic], a distinguished USC professor, would victimize Mr. Jammal and his family to execute a third party hoax in which he was the primary benefactor." John Morris, the Administrative Vice President of the ICR, made much of Larue's "long association with humanistic and anti-Christian organizations" and concluded that "This is hardly the resume of an objective critic." All defended the overall quality of Sun's research."

In 1993, "the Long Beach Press-Telegram--Jammal's hometown newspaper--ran a story about the hoax. In the story, Jammal did not admit to a hoax, but stated in response to a question about his religious background that "If I told you that, you'd know the secret." The reporter noted in the article that a poem framed in glass on Jammal's piano begins, "Humanism is a philosophy for people who think for themselves ....""

And so, eventually, Jammal revealed the deliberate hoax, and that Larue had been in on it with him from the beginning. They offered up a chunk of railroad tie marinated in teriyaki sauce, and creationists either bought it, or were happy to let other 'liars for Christ' perpetrate a fake on the public.

I got the latest Heritage book auction catalog yesterday, and was a bit sad to see that Krown & Spellman will be liquidating their collections over the next few book auctions. There's a nice encomium of the store and its owners, but apparently health reasons are driving the decision. Founded by UCLA grads, the store was originally in Westwood in the 70s. I remember their location at the 3rd Street Promenade, although just about everything they had was out of my range (and still mostly is!). Lovely old moldy books in Latin and Greek, but maybe even something in English, like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, or Reginald Scot's skeptical look at the witchcraft craze: The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Oh sure, that's only a Third Edition from 1665, but still.

The catalog also noted, tantalizingly for me anyway, that Franklin Spellman has amassed a huge Lord Dunsany collection, which will appear in a later sale.

This is what 45 looks like.

[For reference, this is what 40 looks like.]

The comment there about 'Sunday was lazy football watching and pizza making' remains fairly apposite, as here is dinner:

Prosciutto, broccolini, onion, olives, jalapeño, capers...

Yes, it was very, very good.

But I do not taunt you aimlessly, (maybe).

As I alluded before, a year from today will mark the completion of my 46th year. Twice 23. 23 years (arguably 92) since the events of 23 Skidoo occurred.

So I officially announce 23 Skidoo Times Two. September 13th, 2015 -- hopefully some of you will survive into September 14th.

This live game is not literally a sequel to 23 Skidoo -- especially since only a handful of people 'survived' -- but I'm certainly open to continuing lines.

My basic ideas...

The setting
Date: 1946
Place: Vienna, Austria
Venue: An auction of rare items and curiosae, much of it no doubt liberated by the vicissitudes of WWII.
Characters: to be written by players, and then adapted as needed by moi.
Primary filmic reference: The Third Man. Not that the game will necessarily be anything like this, but you must watch this peerless film, and thank me later.
Theme: Lovecraftian references will no doubt be present, and possibly of primary importance, but not necessarily overpowering. Postwar malaise. Black Market. Greed. Lust. Wrath. Other Deadly Sins.

The game: theater-style live game. In many ways an ode to the Enigma games of yore, but informed by the past few decades.

The players: I hope and trust, a great many of my friends, old and new, from Enigma, Wyrd Con, and beyond.

The details: In general.... TBA.

And so I ask... who's in? Contact me publicly or privately with your ideas, suggestions, concerns, etc.

In some months a more official announcement will appear, but for now this serves as an announcement of intent.

"Appendix D of The Lord of the Rings says that our New Year's Day (January 1) corresponds "more or less" to the Shire's "January 9", and in standard years our September 14 and the Shire's "September 22" [i.e. Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday] both fall 256 days after that date."

I'm getting close to the end of California: An Illustrated History, a big coffee table book from the 70s. And there was a discussion of the Loyalty Oath Controversy at the UC. I still remember the odd feeling of signing a loyalty oath when I went to work for the library system. But since I was not actively seeking to overthrow the government, and I wasn't a member of the Communist Party, it was easy enough to sign so I could get my seven bucks an hour.

But I guess in 1950, when anticommunism was really at its height, the Regents of the UC went a bit further with their loyalty oaths, requiring them of professors. Some 31 refuseniks were dismissed (though they were ultimately reinstated, after the inevitable court case). Among them was UCLA physics professor David Saxon, who later became president of the UC. He passed away in 2005, and this eulogy offers more details, and incidentally shows Saxon kinda rocking the Indiana Jones/professor look.

And while we're at it... Prop 14.

The Rumford Act had banned discrimination in housing. The California Real Estate Association put Prop 14 on the ballot. It forbade the government to "deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right ... to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons [wink wink] as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses."

It passed by a 2 to 1 margin. (Yes, the state and US Supreme Courts struck it down.)

The original rejected Star Trek pilot with Captain Christopher Pike (later edited into "The Menagerie")

and an episode of Columbo.

Both directed by Robert Butler, who will be there in person.

January 24, 2014 - 7:30 pm
Free Admission

--

Also of note on the schedule, the restored Pre-Code film The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Yes, General Yen is played in yellowface, but how can you not love a film in which Christian missionary Barbara Stanwyck has an erotic dream about a Chinese general?

January 12, 2014 - 7:00 pm

Oct. 26: An Evening with the Makers of An American Werewolf in London (and Thriller (in 35mm))

Nov. 17: The Princess Bride (FREE admission)

Subtitled 'Scientific Discoveries and Explorations in the Psychic World', this is the kind of book that makes me sigh with pain every few pages. But I was curious, since Dr. Moss carried out her quasi-unofficial parapsychological studies at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. And some of us met her quondam star psychic, Barry Taff, when he came to Enigma to see if there was interest in his ghost hunting exploits.

Written in 1974, the book offers a breathless glimpse at the state-of-the-art of academic parapsychology at that moment. Moss travelled to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to look at psychic happenings behind the Iron Curtain, and a conference in Prague seems to have given her the idea to write the book. Here's a taste of the conference:

Professor Alexander Dubrov, Soviet academician ... discussed his research into "biogravity," which he defined as "the ability of living organisms to generate and detect gravitational waves."
...
With wonder in his voice, he told us that in mitosis of a cell one can observe "an energetic radiation of photons," visible as a weak luminescence. At the same time, there is present a radiation of ultrasonic waves at a high frequency ... And, during the process of mitosis, the liquid of the cell converts to a crystalline structure. "Imagine," he repeated with excitement, "the liquid of the cell turns into crystal!" For those of us whose juices might not be stirred by this fact, he pointed out that these characteristics tend to confirm his hypothesis that "biogravitational waves" emanate from cells, which in turn could account for such phenomena as telepathy, the movement of objects at a distance, and perhaps even levitation.

Give me a moment for my eyes to roll back into place.

You may think I'm attacking low-hanging fruit, but like with Science and the Paranormal, one of the interesting things about the book is how much time it devotes to things that even the true believers (but not the true true believers) have discarded long ago: Uri Geller, Samuel Soal, Kirlian photography, Ted Serios...

More alarming still is the very favorable treatment all of these things get. I mean, believers and skeptics will argue about whether Ted Serios' 'gizmo' was evidence that his 'thoughtographs' were fraudulent, or merely a perfectly innocent plastic tube that he liked to press against the lens of the camera. But Moss does not mention the gizmo at all.

This and other things I know about made me mistrust the things I didn't know about.

Among the many amici curiae in the Supreme Court's consideration of Prop 8, it's hard (for me, anyway) not to notice the one penned (well, with help of counsel) by two Bruins: political science and history grad Chris Kluwe and history grad Brendon Ayanbadejo.

Cobra Woman (1944)
"The fourth of Universal’s costume adventures pairing Jon Hall and Maria Montez, Cobra Woman provided a welcome bit of tropical escapism to war-weary audiences. Filmed in lush Technicolor with ornate sets and lavish, bejeweled costumes, this fanciful romp is truly a feast for the eyes, if not for more rational faculties."

May 12, 2012 - 4:00 pm @ UCLA Archive

UCLA Physics prof Zvi Bern cowrote the cover article of Scientific American, detailing the use of unitarity (sort of a conservation of probability) to do an end-run around Feynman diagram calculations.

UCLA has long had an imbalance in its Nobel/Ig Nobel ratio on the faculty. This is being rectified in a small way by the addition of psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer, who has been stolen away from Princeton. Oppenheimer's Ig Nobel Prize was for his discovery that "people who use longer words actually appear less intelligent than those who don’t."

Went to the Los Angeles Antiquarian Book Fair of Pasadena. As usual, lots of ridiculous and amazing things, from incunabula to The Hunger Games, medieval elephant folio antiphony pages to Grateful Dead posters.

Outside the exhibition hall they had a few displays of local collectors, including Sarah Michelle Gellar's Rack( Read More )

ETA: Someone, definitely not me, bought a Rudimentum Novitorum for a cool $1.15 million. Also interesting to compare that coverage of the show to the article in the Hollywood Reporter.

Spotted at pharyngula.

Somewhere a little to the *left* of the start of that graph, you'd have found me 'Occupying' Royce quad with a few hundred companions, tearing down barricades, getting face to face with the UCPD, shouting at the Regents who were meeting inside the building to raise our fees yet again.

Strangely, one of the things I remember most was when the meeting was over, and the Regents were all spirited away, and people were dispersing, was shaking hands with the officers.

The Regents are considering differential tuition at the various UC campuses.

"Advocates of allowing undergraduate tuition to vary by campus say that the change would raise funds the schools could share and that consumer demand should play a bigger role in setting tuition."

Hmmm... that sounds reasonable. Supply and demand. And especially if there's sharing throughout the system, it will just make the pie higher for the university system in these trying times.

And yet... some of these quotes make my skin crawl:
"'"Cut us free and let us be our own profit center"'"
"UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego could charge higher fees without harming enrollments, Reyes said. 'I know the clientele could meet those pricing structures,' he said."

the clientele could meet those pricing structures
profit center
the clientele could meet those pricing structures
profit center
the clientele could meet those pricing structures

It's like saying, 'we reject enough rich customers, I mean students, nowadays that if we hiked prices, we could still get full enrollment. And the worthy poor brown children can still go to Riverside!'

There's some lip-flapping about increasing financial aid, but let's face it, with the way fees have already increased -- 32% over the past two years -- an extra 25% on top of that is not likely to be mitigated by any aid plans.

Time to build more suites.

ETA: In 1980 the typical California household would be able to finance 17 bachelor’s degrees at a UC with one year of household income. In 2000 that number had dropped to 5. Today it is only enough to purchase one bachelor’s degree at the UC system.

By Reputation

I'm a bit shocked by the disparity between Berkeley and UCLA, but otherwise satisfied by the showing of California Schools:

#4 Berkeley
#5 Stanford
#10 Caltech
#12 UCLA
#30 UCSD
#34 UCSF
#38 UC Davis
#50s UCSB
#70s USC

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Journal of No. 118

Entries tagged with ucla

Catching up on books

We the Corporations, by Adam Winkler

Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, edited by David Madden

Torches and Pitchforks

Budayeen Nights, by George Alex Effinger

The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose

Gerald Larue, RIP

Krown & Spellman vanishing

A party of special magnificence

The Loyalty Oath Controversy

"The Cage" screening at UCLA Film/TV Archive

Couple upcoming things from the UCLA film/tv archive

The Probability of the Impossible, by Dr. Thelma Moss

Proud to be a Bruin

Snake worshippers... why did it have to be snake worshippers?

Bruins in Science

Book porn

up and away

The invisible hand starts poking the UC system

Times Higher Ed 2011 University rankings