The New Republic's Jonathan Chait pens a mega-smack down of anti-capitalist Naomi Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," and all I can say is: Thank you, Jon Chait.

Why the gratitude? Buzz over her book has pushed Klein to the verge intellectual canonization, so much that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saw her as a worthy enough adversary to debate on a live radio program. Her conspiracy theorist-like contention in "The Shock Doctrine" is that profit-hungry free marketeers relish major disasters, (from everything to Hurricane Katrina to, yes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) which allow them to push their unpopular reforms on the the rest of us who are "shocked" by calamity. Her supporting arguments and examples are so absurd that, as Christopher Hitchens said in a debate on the existence of God, "There are no statements worth arguing here; all you can do is underline them.”

Where I merely underlined Klein's absurdities while reading her book, Chait ripped them to shreds. An excerpt from his piece:

Klein's model leaves little room for the non-economic varieties of conflict, such as ethnic or sectarian strife. "Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era," she observes, "which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemocratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical freemarket 'reforms.'" One example Klein cites in her list is the U.S. intervention in Kosovo. But the human rights violation that she deplores was not the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, it was the American response. And what motivated the American attempt to stop the mass atrocity? Capitalism, of course: "The NATO attack on Belgrade in 1999 created the conditions for rapid privatizations in the former Yugoslavia--a goal that predated the war." (Klein assures her readers that economics was not the "sole motivator" for the war, but her analysis makes no room for any such complication.)

What I find most repugnant in Klein's work is her unrepentant character assassination of Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist she indicts as a sort of evil genius behind disaster capitalism. Klein's smoking gun? A three-sentence statement plucked completely out of context from an introduction Friedman wrote to one of his books. Friedman died before "The Shock Doctrine" was published, allowing Klein to peddle her ridiculous accusations without so much as a reply from the accused. (I pointed out Klein's misuse of Friedman's quote here.)

Oh, my heaven! (Oh, my Hubbard?) Is Will Smith a secret Scientologist? Is that why he appeared in that dreadful sequel to "Men in Black"? If he is (and he says he's not), why is he being so coy about it? Will the private school that he and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith are funding inculcate scientological principles on the impressionable minds of the young students who attend?

And, breathlessly, above all: Why are they being given such a hard time about it?

It's a private school, and Smith & Smith are entitled to fund it according to their educational vision, without having to explain, deny or be coy about their personal beliefs. At least, unlike a celebrity or two we could name, they're not trying to shove beliefs of any sort down our throats. Maybe, as one educator in the know says, the school will cram a lot of Scientology jargon into kids' heads, maybe it actually will make learning more fun by having children learn through experience instead of deadly long lectures, and maybe it will do both.

This is why we have private schools, so that people of any particular belief can frame education according to their own philosophies. Sometimes this means no standardized testing, and sometimes it means Advanced Placement kindergarten.

There is something to be taken from this whole celebrity stew, though. The Smiths' money is the Smiths' call. But what if the taxpayers were called on to pay for kids' education at this school? If the supporters of school vouchers had their way — and they never give up on trying to have their way — this is the kind of question we'd have to confront.

This is why school vouchers are not, as proponents like to frame it, just a way to save students from miserable inner-city schools. Once the public's money is involved, the public should have the right to ask these questions and approve or disapprove of whether a school like the Smiths' would be entitled to a share of that money.

Vouchers aren't just problematic for public schools, or for public expenditure. They're a problem for private schools, too. Once the public is paying, it has the right to demand — and it should demand — good performance from those schools. But how do we measure performance? These days, through standardized tests. So what about schools whose very philosophy runs counter to those tests? The private schools wouldn't just put financial pressure on public schools; the public would be placing subtle financial pressure on private schools to change their ways to make them acceptable for public funding. There goes the beautiful diversity of private schooling.

Is the Smiths' school an example of that beautiful diversity? That's up to the beholder. The important point is that private schooling works best for both private and public schools when it stays private.

Mathew C. Taylor's recent Blowback "Stop cheering on charter schools" is a gift that keeps on giving. From Lompoc, some Econ 101:

Since Mr. Taylor is an English teacher I will cut him some slack. He’s probably never read an introductory economics book and so doesn’t realize how bad monopolies are.  How they lead to higher prices, and poorer service.  In fact our school systems are a perfect example of this.  California’s higher education systems are some of the best in the world.  Competition between universities makes everyone perform better and helps to keep costs down.  Our public education systems though, are some of the worst performing.  Lack of competition has resulted in a in bloated bureaucracy and teachers union.  Are there good people in our public schools still?  Of course, but the system is working against them.  The teachers union, and school bureaucrats fight any attempts at reform or change that would weaken their power.  That’s why they hate charters, because they can’t control them.  Luckily the people of California are waking up and demanding change.  It’s not ok for hundreds of thousands of kids not to graduate, or learn.  It’s not ok for schools to be unsafe.  And it’s not ok for teachers unions, or school bureaucracy’s to stand in the way of students educations.   

Mathew Andresen
Lompoc CA

And some more economics:

Mr. Taylor,

I can appreciate your frustrations and I believe that most understand the difficulties of teaching but your assertion that California does not spend enough on students is an outright misrepresentation.  In fact, if you include funding from the state of California for universities we in this state spend more per student than any other state in the union. 

I will never forget how a peer from Florida could not believe how cheap our junior college system was.  Junior college in Florida is more costly than the UC system in California.  If you want increased funding for k-12 then go to Sacramento and fight for it but please acknowledge what the taxpayers of this state do pay for all eduation.  Higher education is a privilege and most states make the student/family pay for it. 

Ken Bartels

We start the new Mailbag with two letters that continue the tradition of finding revanchist-counter-revolutionary-kapitalist-rentier assumptions lurking behind the language choices of the L.A. Times. Do these unravelings of our underlying mythologies reveal the unconscious bias of the Times, heightened sensitivity among readers, creeping carelessness with language, or something else? I'm just happy that people are reading carefully.

Replying to Megan McArdle and Ezra Klein's Campaign '08 Dust-Up, a reader in the Twin Cities detects the shadowy hand of the racetrack lobby:

Editor:
 
Regarding "Obamcainia" you write: "Megan McArdle discusses the McCain-Obama horserace with Ezra Klein."  Well I've got news for you.  It isn't a horserace.  And the fact that you and most other media outlets view and report it as such, is the primary reason why the political process has so tragically devolved in America.

BTW, how's circulation?

Lowest Regards,
Mark A Tarnowski
Minneapolis, MN

And from scenic Fort Myers, Florida, a language consultant has some hard words for Allen Jones' recent Blowback "Let nonviolent prisoners out."

"Building beds for the mentally ill is a fine goal" sounds more like a surrealist film than journalism. There is a tinge of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" in it. Dali, Ernst. DeChirico, Bosch could probably have painted it well.

You transferred two metaphors to journalism that are not at home there, "building beds," a euphemism of state bureaucracies, and "the" mentally ill, an alley prejudice, the equivalent of "the" Jews in Mel's drunk mouth. The transfer is jarring.

Can you tell me what you were trying to paint with those words?

Harold A. Maio
Advisory Board
American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Board Member
Partners in Crisis
Former Consulting Editor
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal
Boston University
Language Consultant
UPENN Collaborative on Community Integration of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities

We'll be back with more biased framing.

In the course of endorsing District Attorney Steve Cooley for re-election in the June 3 primary, The Times editorial board reminded voters that Cooley promised to serve only two terms (this would be his third). We also expressed alarm at his plan to anoint a successor. If he had kept his promise, we noted, there would be other qualified candidates running to succeed him instead of the two we believed would be worse than Cooley. Here's a link to the full editorial. Here's a brief selection:

As for Dist. Atty. Cooley, it is noteworthy that he criticized predecessor Gil Garcetti in 2000 for seeking a third term and promised that he would serve only two. This year, he is seeking his third.

It's not the first time a politician has broken a promise, but we recall his rationale -- the office benefits from "fresh eyes" on old problems. It held true then, and it holds true today. Under Cooley, the district attorney's office has done a competent job of handling felony prosecutions, and Cooley deserves credit for his principled stand on third strikes -- agreeing to prosecute them as strikes only when they are violent felonies. But if he stepped down now, as he had promised, other lawyers would be stepping up as candidates to reinvigorate the office.

We're especially concerned about Cooley's stated plan to stick around until he has groomed and selected a successor. That's a power that belongs to voters, not to him.

So it's with chagrin and a hint of admiration for his chutzpah that I take note of this Cooley mailer that quotes from the editorial in the lower right-hand corner and puts "Los Angeles Times" in huge letters to show we're on his team. "We go with Cooley." Well, we did say that.

Nigerian Larry Bowoto says he was shot by soldiers in the pay of a Chevron Corp. subsidiary:

I was standing on a drilling platform in the Niger Delta run by Chevron Nigeria Ltd. More than 100 unarmed villagers joined me there to protest the loss of our fish, our clean water and our trees because of Chevron's oil production activities in our region, and to protest the loss of our traditional ways of supporting ourselves as a result of these activities.

The lawsuit I (and others) filed in 1999 contends that Chevron Nigeria's own documents show that it paid for, transported and supervised Nigerian military and police forces that responded to our protests. They opened fire on us; it is our contention that they did this without warning. Two of the protesters were killed; I and more than 10 others were wounded. Still others were arrested and beaten by the Nigerian authorities.

Columnist Rosa Brooks objects to the notion that Hillary Clinton represents all women. Contributing editor Bill Stall parses Prop. 13 after 30 years and says it's time for a change. And Dickinson College's Crispin Sartwell looks at affirmative action for an oppressed minority in academia -- conservatives.

The editorial board endorses legislative candidates and wonders what's next for SAG now that AFTRA has signed a deal.

On the letters page, readers discuss local parishes paying for the Catholic priests scandal. L.A.'s Susan North says, "Let the Vatican have a yard sale. Rome is ultimately responsible, and Rome should pay."

*Art by Richard Downs

At the Center for Immigration Studies, David North says foreign students who are too poor to have cars can't be contributing to the U.S. economy:

For several decades in the last century many foreign leaders, particularly from Europe’s former colonies, had been educated in America and were friendly to the United States. That was and is a purely good thing.

Further, at the university level, it is helpful to U.S. students to have non-U.S. students in their classes — particularly in the fields of the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences. It makes for a more cosmopolitan experience for the Americans involved. Unfortunately, most foreign students, particularly at the graduate level, are studying science, mathematics, and engineering, fields where the students’ overseas backgrounds are of lesser value.

But foreign students as a plus for the American economy, like soy beans grown in Iowa and exported to China? That’s an argument that does not stand up under examination.

Straw man argument? Not exactly: He's responding to the annual "Open Doors" report from the Institute of International Education, which states: "International students contribute approximately $14.5 billion dollars to the U.S. economy, through their expenditure on tuition and living expenses."

North says that figure's wrong: See what you think of his proof. Still, I'm not sure how important the balance-of-payments argument is among the universities that want to attract more foreign students. The main attraction is that they pay full tuition, isn't it?

In a cover story for the Jewish Journal, Brad A. Greenberg gives a long, fascinating profile of Kevin MacDonald, the Cal State Long Beach professor whose, um, particular interest in The Jews has created a dilemma for the college. The piece is well worth reading in its entirety, but I'll just note that praise is due to: 1) Cal State Long Beach, which is doing a creditable job of balancing MacDonald's academic rights (if you believe such rights exist, as I don't) against the need to protect itself against both anti-Semitism and lawsuits; 2. Greenberg, who seems to maintain a perfectly dry tone in the face of some pretty hair-raising stuff (and I only say seems because I'd never heard of MacDonald before reading this piece and have nothing against which to measure it); and in a strange way, 3) MacDonald himself, who blends creepiness, crackpottery and a surprising forthrightness into a weird form of amiability that I can sort of respect. I hate to use such a hoary cliché, but he's a quintessentially American type of oddball, the kind you don't want to listen to because he occasionally makes you say "Hm, he's got a point." In particular, check out his case for why David Irving's biography of Goebbels should be put back on the shelves; if the book is as he characterizes it, then... Hm, he's got a point. (Experts alert: If it's not as he describes it, the comments are open!)

As I said, I'd never heard of MacDonald before this piece, but in the way of such things, once you're aware of him, he starts showing up everywhere. Interestingly, his real pillars of support are not just among white supremacists. (MacDonald, don'tcha know, isn't against other ethnicities; he's just supportive of his own European roots.) Instead, he attracts some pretty broad interest for his particular case on immigration:

MacDonald's core complaint is Jewish influence on immigration laws. He blames passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, which abolished national origin quotas and made immigration easier for non-Westerners, on a Jewish desire to oust European Americans from the majority.

"European people in this country will be a minority in a few years," MacDonald said. "I don't think that would have happened if we had had a sense of ourselves as a culture worth defending. Now, everything is up for grabs."

Which is weird, because I thought building secure border fences was one of those areas where The Jews and the proud European-Americans were in perfect harmony. This stuff gets so confusing so fast you can drive yourself crazy. And then you get tenure, I think.

Whatever your race, creed, color or religion, enjoy this beautiful weekend.

What do you do when a guy high in the running for most hated man in the world teaches at your law school? If you're Christopher Edley Jr., dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school, you half-heartedly defend the professor while highlighting your powerlessness to do anything -- as he did last week did for his embattled faculty member John C. Yoo.

Yoo, of course, is the Berkeley law professor best known as the former Bush administration lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memo" of 2003. Besides laying out a legal argument he thought could protect practitioners of almost certainly illegal "enhanced interrogation" methods from prosecution, Yoo exhibited in his writings a stunning disregard for international law and a creepy nonchalance about expanding the president's terrorism-fighting authority. That much Edley denounces, just as the administration did when the public got wind of the memo. Edley's criticism of Yoo's work in the Bush administration isn't surprising.

More intriguing is how Edley approaches the question he set out to answer: Why is Yoo a professor at such a prestigious university when his legal advice to the most powerful man in the world has come under such resounding criticism by his colleagues? This is where Edley's insight sheds some light on the machinations of the great academy; ready why after the jump.

That'll be $18.1 million, please. BBC reports:

The key to the Kaaba - the ancient cube-shaped shrine in Mecca - went to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's.

The auction house said the price set a record for the sale of an Islamic work of art.

Made of iron and measuring 37cm in length, the key is engraved with the words "This was made for the Holy House of God".

The key was the centrepiece of Sotheby's Islamic art sale, which realised more than $40m (£21.5m) in total.

According to Bloomberg, the key went for 20 times its estimated value, quite possibly because it was the only one left in private hands. (The 58 other ceremonial keys are held by museums, and the original keys remain with the Bani Shaybat tribe in Saudi Arabia, charged with the shrine's upkeep.) Its rarity certainly buoyed the total take of more than $40 million, more than twice Sotheby's previous record.

Fellow high-end auction block Christie's also broke its record on Tuesday, raising more than $23 million in sales of Islamic art. Which raises the question: Is this an anomaly in an unpredictable market, or a growing trend?

It's certainly hard to say what's fueling the demand. Since the buyers were anonymous, their reasons remain their own. But keep in mind, the lucky bidder won what was once a privilege reserved for the caliph: symbolic access to the holiest shrine of Islam: literally a "black box." The symbolism of the purchase in these Islamo-fascinated times is pretty hard to miss.

Richard Rothstein, last seen debating the achievement gap in a Dust-Up with Russlyn Ali, takes to the lackluster Cato Unbound with an interesting take on the 25th anniversary of the report A Nation At Risk, which examined the nation's puported crisis in education. According to Rothstein, the doomsaying of 1983, like most of the doomsaying from that period, turned out to be wrong. But unlike your harmless, garden-variety doomsaying, this one had some negative results:

Because of the report’s doomsday aura, policymakers have mostly failed since 1983 to investigate the causes of these improvements - the obvious, unasked, question is, what were we doing right from 1978 to 1990 (and since), so we can do more of it?

A belief in decline has led to irresponsibility in school reform. Policymakers who believed they could do no harm because American schools were already in a state of collapse have imposed radical reforms without careful consideration of possible unintended adverse consequences. Not thinking that President Reagan’s rule (’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’) applied to what conservatives and liberals alike assumed was an already broken school system, this irresponsibility reached its zenith in the bipartisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2002.

I do not suggest that American schools are adequate, that American students’ level of achievement in math and reading is where it should be, that American schools have been improving as rapidly as they should, or that the achievement gap is narrowing to the extent needed to give us any satisfaction. I only suggest that we should approach fixing a system differently if we believe its outcomes are slowly improving than if we believe it is collapsing. And we owe the latter, flawed assumption, to A Nation at Risk.

Full article.

Keep it in mind next time you're presented with the secular version of Pascal's Wager. (That is, the "Hey, if it turns out we're wrong about the decline and fall of X, all we did was take enlightened action Y" line of argument, which usually precedes the "It's time to stop talking about X and just do something!" argument, and frequently ends up with "Hey, problem X seems to have solved itself, but now what do we do about all these Zs we've created?")

Seventh months after a Los Angeles Times editorial urged Hillary Clinton to expedite the release of records from her time as first lady, the National Archives and the Bill Clinton Library have disgorged more than 11,000 pages of her official schedules.

Having sifted through such artifacts in a previous life, I sympathize with the reporters who are now excavating the files for newsworthy nuggets. It helps when they’re available, as the Clinton cache is, on the Web or a CD. I have unfond memories of being part of a posse of reporters who had to prowl through the paper records of John G. Roberts Jr.’s service in the Reagan administration.

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, the pesky public-interest group that filed suit to obtain the first lady files, said a quick eyeballing of the document (or datebook) dump indicated that Hillary was indeed a “co-president.” Fitton presumably meant this as a criticism, but it bolsters Hillary’s claim that her experience in the White House is relevant to her campaign to return there under her own colors. But if the Clinton campaign wants to make that argument, it should explain why it didn’t move heaven, Earth and the National Archives to produce this material earlier.

Can you shoot spitballs in home school? If so, Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer had better watch out, because home schoolers are fuming about their recent Blowback "Regulating home schoolers."  Commenters are all over the story — you can add your own two cents in the message board — and several readers were motivated to break out the old stone table and send an old-fashioned letter to the editor. Some samples:

Homeschooling Works Well Without State Oversight

As a homeschooling mom I am so encouraged by the many who choose to show their support for homeschooling and  those of us who choose to do so. However, I am surprised by how many of those who think that a proven method of teaching would be "improved" by state oversight.

If one does not wish to to consider the successful people both in history as well as those who are walking among us in workplaces and colleges that were homeschooled, perhaps you might want to consider your pocketbook. 

Regulating Homeschools would cost you big money in taxes that this state cannot afford right now. Do we really need a new section in the department of education to fund?

Wouldn't it make more sense to use all available money on the children currently in public schools?

In January, Education Week's comprehensive report card gave California a grade of "D+" when it comes to funding our schools, a "C-" on the teaching profession, and a "D" on K-12 achievement. Taken along with the California high school drop-out rate I find it odd that so many are calling for homeschoolers to be regulated now.

Do your research! Homeschooling works best without heavy regulation!

Angie Weaver
Garberville

---

Editors,

What a shame authors Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer hadn't yet shared their self-professed insights into the motives and intentions of home schoolers some 20 years ago when I began homeschooling for a number of years.  Maybe if they had my homeschooled kid would have been able to know some academic success in her life instead of graduating from UCLA.

Dana Strunk
U.H.S.P. (Uncredentialed Home Schooling Parent) Redlands

---

Dear Editor,

In reference to “Regulating Homeschoolers,” Op-Ed page, 3/13/08: To borrow a phrase, “there has always been something decidedly…anti-democratic in” traditional schooling. What could possibly be less democratic than top-down curriculum aimed almost wholly at raising test scores to keep the funds coming in? Ask any public school teacher who has a principal or district curriculum heavy breathing down her neck to make sure that she is on the right page in the language arts text book or is reading from the script in her teacher’s manual. In terms of the students, public school classrooms are at best benevolent dictatorships. With state standards and benchmarks to keep time with how could you possibly let students choose their own course of study? I imagine that the authors would also say that the bullying and teasing that goes on in traditional schools is character building and homeschooled children are missing out on that important part of growing up in a democracy. The fact is, state regulations have put a stranglehold on the public schools. The result is a disaffected populace. I think that Coombs and Shaffer would do well to check with their colleagues, college professors who look forward to having homeschooled students in their classes because those students have not had their passion bulldozed out of them, still can think for themselves, and are self-directed learners. Those, in my opinion, are the kinds of citizens we want in a democracy.

-Susie Stonefield Miller
Sebastopol,

---

It seems to me that Coombs and Shaffer protest too much. Although our older child was public schooled, we chose to educate our younger child at home. We have been able to teach him at the rate and level that fits him. He is ahead of his peers in all subjects, but one, where he we are taking extra time with him.

When my older child with similar abilities was in second grade the teacher told us that she was sorry he was bored; we should provide advanced work for him ourselves at home. We provide a secular education, sans TV, and are both scientists. There are many like us. Just as credentialed public school teachers regularly make the news for various abuses, there are abuses that occur and make the news among all groups of people. This cannot be defended, but neither can it be regulated away.

Our tax dollars pay do not support the schooling of our younger child - they go to the public schools. These same California public schools provide a popular program, abbreviated CAVA, which provides school at home. The children learn from a computer program and their parents.

Please do not promote misunderstanding through stereotypes, professors. There are many, many secular home schoolers who provide top-notch educations to their children. Studies conclude that home schooled children are better educated than their public schooled peers. Public schools admit they are having trouble teaching the children they already have. What would they do with over 166,000 more?

Lisa Whelan
Goleta

---

As a secular homeschooler I strongly resent Professors Coombs & Shafffer's attempt to pigeonhole all homeschoolers as some kind of religious nut cases who leave the education of their children to television. My six year-old daughter is studying American history, geography, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, cursive handwriting, literature, mathematics, and science. In addition she takes ballet and art lessons and has more friends than I am able to keep track of. A child's education, like a child's upbringing ought to be a parent's responsibility and prerogative. In the absence of specific evidence of abuse or neglect the state has no right to interfere.

Gideon Reich
Aliso Viejo

What a two-week punch it's been for New Jersey. First Wall native Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a.k.a. Kristen, proved to be the only sensible character in the Empire State's Spitzer farce. Now the ashes of Dina Matos McGreevey's divorce from former N.J. Gov. James McGreevey have returned to blue, hot life with revelations from an actual graduate of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

By way of both praise for truth-seeking and caution about evaluating claims made by adultery correspondents, please take a look at Andrew Strickler's piece highlighting the sharp dissonance between Kristen's unflattering description of the Jersey Shore and the awesome, awesome awesomeness of the actual Jersey Shore. I don't believe Dupré should feel compelled to deflect or soften or in any way defend her personal reputation, and I wish her hard work and success in whatever path she chooses to take. But just because the bluenoses are ganging up on you is no excuse for dumping on the Garden State.

Theodore Pedersen, the Scarlet Knight now at the center of the toothache-probingly annoying-but-compelling McGreevey saga, emerges as a 29-year-old philosopher. As he tells America's finest newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger:

"[Dina Matos McGreevey]'s trying to make this a payday for herself. She should have told the truth about the three of us." Pedersen did not say if he was gay or bisexual and only described having contact with Matos McGreevey during the trysts. He also said he never knew for sure if McGreevey was gay.

"I had heard the rumors in circles outside of work," he said. "In hindsight, there might have been light interest (in me), but it didn't seem like he was gay. It did enhance their sexual relationship having me be a part of it."

Even casual Savage Love readers will recognize that the tripartite alignment alluded to here does not dispose of the question of any participant's permanent sexual orientation, if permanent sexual orientation does in fact exist. The Star-Ledger quotes a four-sentence passage from Matos McGreevey's book which is equally nebulous on the matter:

In her memoir, Matos McGreevey says little about the sex life she had with her husband, except to say that it never gave her any reason to doubt he was straight.

"The sex was good," Matos McGreevey wrote.

It's worth noting that both Matos McGreevey and Pedersen could both be telling the truth (at least as quoted here; I have not read Silent Partner, so I don't know if she makes any falsifiable claims about specific romantic activities). In fact, more credit to Matos McGreevey if it is true, for trying to make the most of her mate's special interests — though others may take a less tolerant view than I do, particularly when full custody of a child is at issue. At Matos McGreevey's request, Pedersen has given a sealed deposition in the McGreeveys' divorce case, reports the Star Ledger, which also quotes Pedersen's useful seduction tips:

"The more we spend time with each other, the more we begin to trust each other with non-professional things," he said. "That relationship starts to progress, to transform into subtle hints, flirts."

Yes, Pedersen is fine! But how will this affect James McGreevey's efforts to become an Episcopal priest?

Sen. Gil Cedillo is no quitter. For years, the Los Angeles Democrat has been bringing forward bills to given driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Sadly for him (and for basic safety on the streets). Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps coming up with inventive new reasons not to like the idea.

Now Cedillo has another politically unpopular idea he's planning to go the distance on — financial aid for illegal immigrants. The first version of the bill would have made it harder for students here legally to get financial aid, since there already are limited amounts to go around. A second version of the bill was better, using new funding, but nevertheless failed.

This year, Cedillo recognizes there is no way to add state funding for financial aid. Probably such aid will be cut. So his newest bill would direct the state's colleges (and ask UC) to consider illegal-immigrant students as qualified for their own reserves of aid, some private, some public.

The problem is, we're dealing with an even smaller pot of money during an unhappy economic period, when many families throughout the state will need more aid.

Still, there's a rationale behind Cedillo's idea. This state accepts illegal immigrants who live in Califorina to its public universities and colleges, as state residents (in other words, they don't have to pay out-of-state tuition). These students are regarded as no different from other students, and their very attendance at these schools is, in fact, a form of financial aid, since state subsidies keep the fees at these schools extraordinarily low. Why, then, should these students somehow become "other than" when it comes to additional financial aid?

Heather Mac Donald's lightning-rod piece on campus rape takes the top spot this week, with Dallas Weaver's Blowback on copyright a very close second. Readers didn't make this another mostly-Obama week, opting instead for conscience-stricken paparazzi and stubborn sadness. Here they are:

1. What campus rape crisis? by Heather Mac Donald
2. Copyright this, by Dallas Weaver
3. Surge doesn't equal success, by Michael Kinsley
4. The snapper snapped, by Nick Stern
5. Too good to win, by Joel Stein
6. White like us, by Gregory Rodriguez
7. What a little bird told us, by Jonathan Rosen
8. The miracle of melancholia, by Eric G. Wilson
9. Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs
10. Food or fuel? by the editorial board

Gregory Rodriguez advises Barack Obama to start wearing his patriotism on his sleeve -- or on his lapel -- and American University law professor Nancy D. Polikoff calls for laws to recognize the whole spectrum of family structures, whether gay or straight, married or unmarried. Civil rights lawyer Peggy Garrity assesses the damage that tort reform has caused the justice system:

A second woman is likely to face the same fate in the same court, in a suit alleging that she was drugged and brutally gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq and then held incommunicado, without food or water, in a shipping container by the same employer.... Adding insult to injury, the rape kit used by a military doctor in examining the victim was reportedly handed over to Halliburton/KBR, and doctor's notes and photos of her bruises are missing.

There was no criminal prosecution of the alleged perpetrators because they worked for a defense contractor, which is exempt from criminal sanctions under an order enacted by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq during L. Paul Bremer III's tenure as its administrator.

That decision was outrageous enough. But now the Texas court ruling appears to say that because of the arbitration clause, these women have no standing in a U.S. civil court either.

In the next installment of its series "The Great Thirst," the editorial board predicts plans for a peripheral canal will be a win-win in the water wars between Northern and Southern California. The board also kicks off the one-year countdown to round one of Los Angeles' city elections, and calls out John McCain and Barack Obama for inching away from their commitment to public funds:

[W]ith his new front-runner status -- and facing the prospect of raising more private money than McCain in a general election -- Obama has begun to waver. Asked in the last Democratic debate if he was waffling on a promise to accept public financing, he dodged, saying that, if nominated, he wants to "sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that is fair for both sides." That sounds like the "old politics" that Obama inveighs against.

Both candidates should get over their buyer's remorse. What they gain by abandoning public financing, they may lose in credibility.

Readers write requiems for Dutton's books, set to close at the end of April. "With the imminent passing of Dutton's books," mourns Burt Prelutsky, "I feel as if I am on the verge of losing a relative. That is, a relative I actually like."

Bored after the War On Christmas ceasefire, I tried in late 2007 to get another civil war going, this one over New Year. To wit: Who are you to wish me well on holidays drawn from your "rational" sun-worshipping eurocentric calendar? My lunar calendar, where holidays show up during high midsummer in some years and the dead of winter in others, where we never know which month is crop-planting month, is no worse than yours, merely different!

I got nowhere with that prank. One bored colleague replied, "Eh, our calendar's no better. They can't even do it without adding an extra day every four years."

Too true! To all people who still wonder why the cycles of the day, the lunar month and the year can't be better matched, and to everybody else, I highly recommend Thomas S. Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. "Being able to understand how it looks from the creator's point of view is just great," writes Amazon reviewer A Customer. "My lesson learned: work your tail off and when you win, it always looks easier than it was..."

But don't take Customer's word for it, take mine. Whether you're a history buff or just curious about why people still comprehend so much of the world through meaningless human-scale patterns, Kuhn's book is full of valuable insights and disambiguations.

In the eternal struggle against The Jews, there can be no deserters.

That's pretty much the takeaway from this astounding interview that Norman Finkelstein, the historian, communist provocateur and academic-without-portfolio, gave last month to Lebanon's Future TV. Among many other Finkelsteinian aperçus: Any Arab who fails to resist the Israeli juggernaut to his last bullet will become a "slave of the Americans" reduced to "crawling on your knees"; interviewer Najat Sharafeddine reveals herself as neither a serious nor a level-headed person for suggesting that the 2006 attack on Lebanon could have been avoided; Hitler would have prefered to achieve his goals through peaceful means (I am not making that up); anybody who prefers survival to glorious death in service of the international Shiite jihad deserves no respect; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a "human freak"; any Lebanese who is presently alive has "no self-respect"; and of course, every situation everywhere always is exactly analogous to Hitler and the Nazis.

It's a mind-bogglingly arrogant, condescending, creepy, ill-informed performance. And in fact an overtly imperialist one that erases all marks of local politics and individual choice in order to make room for great-power conflict. In true Leninist fashion, Finkelstein does not believe in bystanders; any Arab who chooses not to engage the international struggle against the Zionist/capitalist enemy is not only expendable but beneath consideration. (Allah only knows what Fink made of Future TV's founder, the late rentier oppressor of the proletariat Rafiq al-Hariri.)

I've never given much thought to Finkelstein, who seems to have done some interesting historical (or at least historical-debunking) work, and my view of his long-running feud with Alan Dershowitz has never gone beyond a vague wish for both sides to lose. But at least Dersh contents himself with being a stateside nuisance of no danger to anybody except the wives of insulin-happy bazillionaires. Finkelstein, however, is speaking in the context of a goodwill tour of Lebanon on behalf of Hizbollah — whose views, don'tcha know, have been too long ignored in the United States. (Speak for yourself, Norm!) This is where the cesspool of leftwing extremism eventually flows, into a full-hearted alliance with any scuzzbucket willing and able to kill people. At Reason, Michael Young (who has had his own apparently bruising exchange with the no-nonsense Sharafeddine) expands on the pathology at work:

This behavior comes full circle especially for the revolutionary fringe on the left, which seems invariably to find its way back to violence. In the same way that Finkelstein can compare Hezbollah admiringly to the Soviet Red Army and the communist resistance during World War II ("it was brutal, it was ruthless"), he sees in resistance a quasi-religious act that brooks no challenge, even from its likely victims. What is so odd in Finkelstein and those like him is that the universalism and humanism at the heart of the left's view of itself has evaporated, to be replaced by categorical imperatives usually associated with the extreme right: blood; honor; solidarity; and the defense of near-hallowed land.

Full interview (courtesy of the invaluable MEMRI) and transcript.

More than a few years ago, I filled a chair at a swanky dinner for William F. Buckley.

I was a young student from farm country in Ohio, a state where, as Mark Twain said of Cincinnati in particular, "Everything that happens comes there 10 years later than anywhere else." So the sartorially resplendent Mr. Buckley was a novelty and a wonder to my eyes, down to footgear I'd never seen before — those gentleman's embroidered velvet slippers you see advertised in "The New Yorker." For all I can remember, they had dollar signs sittched onto them in gold bullion thread.

Toward the end of the dinner, he rose to speak. His language was just as highly ornamented as his slippers, with its curlicues of vocabulary and metaphor, and, I listened to him transfixed as I mechanically ate my dessert — a slice of cake. My great-grandfather ate cake in a curious fashion that I had imitated from childhood, eating the cake part first and leaving the frosting for last, standing on the plate like the ruins of a chocolate fudge fort.

In our family this is perfectly normal, but at some point during his peroration, Buckley glanced down the table and saw my odd gateau fortifications. He paused, stared, arched one renowned eyebrow, lifted one thin Brahmin nostril into the slightest quiver — and resumed his remarks at the precise syllable where had left off.

Mortified, I hurriedly and furtively cleaned my plate. Buckley went to Yale but that evening, I was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo appears to have jumped through all the necessary hoops to make sure its pending deal with a Saudi university doesn't break any U.S. employment laws.

Cal Poly would design an engineering department for Jubail University College, which will ban women both from teaching and taking classes in the program. But Cal Poly professors, who apply to be part of the $5.9-million contract, can participate in the design task regardless of gender (or religion, etc.) In addition, Cal Poly spokespeople say it's their "understanding" that the California school will not be restricted in any way from sending whatever professors it chooses to be the co-directors who help launch the department "on the ground."

If it appears to be so legal, why does it flunk the smell test so badly? If Cal Poly has to be so careful to set up the circumstances under which women can and can't be discriminated against, that would seem to be enough of an indication that this is a bad venture, especially for a state college. Yes, the Saudis would be paying for their services (Cal Poly isn't doing this out of charity) and are expected to fund some nifty research projects in addition. But Cal Poly is a public institution of higher learning, a place with the highest sort of obligation to uphold noble standards of anti-discrimination. Jubail might be funding this particular contract, but Cal Poly wouldn't exist to sign a contract if it weren't for California taxpayers.

Stanford University announced Wednesday that it will join Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the other elite universities who waive tuition for students whose families earn less than $100,000 a year, throwing in free room and board for families who make less than $60,000.

This mind-boggling observation, from the San Jose Mercury News:

[T]he changes mean Stanford could be cheaper than state schools. For instance, a youth from a family with an annual adjusted gross income of $55,000 would pay $4,400 to $4,900 a year at Berkeley after scholarships. They'd get a free ride at Stanford.

This is great news for brainy high schoolers whose families otherwise might not be able to cover Stanford’s $36,000 yearly tuition tab, right?

Of course. There's just this catch: first they have to become one of the lucky few (around 11%) who make the cut.

Colleges, especially those offering blockbuster student aid deals like Stanford, are receiving record numbers of applications this year. Writes Audrey Kahane, a private college admissions counselor in West Hills:

Cornell's applications are up 7.5 percent this year and an incredible 57 percent since 2004. Northwestern's applications have climbed almost 14 percent this year and 54 percent in just the last three years. University of Chicago has 14 percent more applications this year, and Amherst is up 17 percent. Harvard has had a 19 percent increase in applications this year, which will lower last year's 9.1 percent acceptance rate to 7.7 percent this year.

...Here in California, University of California campuses have received 121,000 applications, an increase of 9 percent. Applications to Cal State campuses are up 11 percent.

With that kind of competition afoot, even safety schools aren’t sure things anymore. Blame it in part on the ease of filling out applications online. Blame it in part on the sheer numbers of boomer spawn swimming their way through secondary school these days (an estimated 3.2 million this year, expected to peak next year.) Whatever the reason, Stanford’s new program won’t make life any easier for most college-bound 12th graders, who, in addition to having to compete for scarce admissions slots, face a student loan credit crunch and rapidly rising tuition bills at most other schools, which don't have $17 billion endowments like Stanford's.

Party on, kids.

The Pope of the New Novel is dead.

Or, let me rephrase that: The body of Alain Robbe-Grillet is room temperature though seemingly cooler to the touch, with slack surface areas along its longitude and discolorations in transverse patterns. The anterior section is a faded beige while the dorsal area and extremeties show evidence of settlement.

Dullest writer of the twentieth century? Visionary genius of the post-religious age? Cinematic huckster? Fearless explorer of the post-rational? I'd say all of the above. The author of, among others, The Erasers, The Voyeur and La Jalousie, and the screenwriter of the mother of all art-house puzzlers Last Year At Marienbad was 85 years old. If you're going to give Robbe-Grillet a shot, I'd suggest any of the above, although my favorite is the short novel In the Labyrinth. I suspect with his passing we are now out of literary lions in winter, those people like Norman Mailer who could still pass as enfants terribles even in their ninth decades.

Dennis Dutton has a useful collection of obits. Le Monde calls him of all the great postwar writers "undoubtedly the best-known abroad and the least-liked in France." A very extensive piece in The Telegraph recounts the following telling anecdote:

In 1961 he had a narrow escape when the aeroplane in which he was travelling from Paris to Tokyo crashed on take-off after a stop at Hamburg airport. Robbe-Grillet dictated his account to a journalist, who found (as so many of the novelist's readers were to find) his version of events objective, but lacking in drama.

This soon changed to a complaint that Robbe-Grillet's version was described in clichéd journalese. His protestations that the journalist was responsible for these infelicities were ignored, though Umberto Eco rushed to his defence.

Whatever you think of his stuff (and the chances are extremely high that, whoever you are, you'll hate it), you can learn more about writing no-loaded-language descriptions from Robbe-Grillet than from any other recently deceased author.

It's tough being Milton Friedman these days. On top of being dead, the Nobel prize-winning economist is getting a posthumous beat-down by popular anti-capitalist Naomi Klein. In her writing and talks on globalization and the free market, Klein often quotes three sentences of Friedman's writing to expose the economist as an evil genius who helped inspire so-called "disaster capitalism." As Klein recently wrote in the L.A. Times:

Do the free-market policies packaged as emergency cures actually fix the crises at hand? For the ideologues involved, that has mattered little. What matters is that, as a political tactic, disaster capitalism works. It was the late free-market economist Milton Friedman, writing in the preface to the 1982 reissue of his manifesto, "Capitalism and Freedom," who articulated the strategy most succinctly. "Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."

A smoking gun? See the quote in context and decide for yourself after the jump.

Green fever seems to have hit the state, the media, or both. Here are some of the verdant shades of California controversies:

Tree-huggers versus sun-lovers: A Sunnyvale couple refuses to cut down their redwoods, even though a neighbor says they're blocking his solar panels. Now that's environmentally awkward.

EPA battle heats up: EPA head Stephen Johnson gets the third degree at a hearing chaired by California's Sen. Barbara Boxer for preventing the Golden State from enacting tougher fuel efficiency standards. Embarrasingly enough, Johnson's mostly on his own, as EPA staff last month issued findings that contradicted his decision.

Off the mean streets, into green sheets: Alameda County is opening an environmentally friendly homeless shelter, equipped with solar panels and water-based heaters.

Green eating hits Sacto: And we're not talking vegetarian.

Thin as plastic: Los Angeles city councilmembers' willpower, that is. The city has given up on following San Francisco's lead and instituting a plastic shopping bag ban. The editorial board said China had a better idea, anyway.

It's not easy smoking green: Even with a doctor's note (and strictly off-hours), a state court rules that using medical marijuana can get you fired. Assemblymember Mark Leno says he'll see about that.

Okay, so maybe that last one wasn't exactly on topic.

The fight between the University of California and grad students enrolled in 2003 looks like a warped version of the typical underdog story — you know, the one where the little guy keeps getting beat down but bounces back to go for the win? Except, in this case, the little guy (students fighting to recover fees that UC improperly raised) won, but the university (which owes 35,000 graduate students about $40,000,000) just won't give up.

In 2003, UC graduate and professional school students saw their fees shoot through the roof, even though UC documents promised that they would not rise for continuing students. In July, some of the affected students filed suit, and the situation has been tied up in court ever since.

When the appeals court decision came down in November, I figured UC would throw in the towel and exit the ring as gracefully as possible. I was wrong. According to the San Jose Mercury News:

Every month that passes adds more than $300,000 in interest to the award, said an attorney for the plaintiffs. But a UC lawyer said the university believes it can still win the case.

"You have to make a judgment whether accumulation of interest outweighs the legal strengths of the case," said the UC attorney, Chris Patti. "We decided that it did not.

"It's going to be a big ticket, whether we have to pay now or in the future."

Translation: We're screwed either way, so why not spend a few million more, especially when we can take it out of student pockets?

It's kind of like writer's strike syndrome: There's no reason not to settle the whole thing and move on, so that I can get my weekly dose of NBC's Chuck — but the two parties are so embittered that they're going to see the other side buried.

The problem with that attitude? They each dig their own holes, and they both still get covered in crap.

The editorial board sees a post-Bhutto future as a chance for White House policy to "get on the right side of history," and writes an open letter to her son on his, and Pakistan's, future:

If you truly wish to struggle for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, you need to make your own way. Identify worthy candidates with the values, skills and experience you believe are needed to run Pakistan, and work for their election. Or start your own NGO. Or go to graduate school and decide for yourself which policies will help your country. Or run for parliament. In 2008, legitimacy cannot be inherited. It must be won with ballots.

Please learn to be the democratic and wise leader your country yearns for. Pakistan will need you — just not now, not in this role. We wish you luck.

The board also tells the city to mind its own business and stop meddling in private labor disputes.

On the Op-Ed page, historian Joseph J. Ellis waxes skeptical about presidential campaign promises, and Manhattan Institute fellow Tamar Jacoby warns that when it comes to anti-immigration sentiment, don't believe the hype. Author Eric Weiner kicks off the New Year by tossing out his self-help books:

Social scientists studying happiness (or subjective well-being, to use the academic term) have found that external factors — quality of government, social interactions and, to an extent, money — determine our happiness more than anything else. In other words, happiness does not reside inside of you. Happiness is out there.

Readers take sides on current state malpractice law. "To put it more bluntly," writes John Fortman, "we need the doctors more than we need the lawyers." Lisa Smock, who describes the fallout from her mother's botched surgery, points out, "to use a 1975 dollar amount for malpractice awards today is a disgrace to the ones who have put their trust in doctors but have been injured by them."

Biotechnology has left the domain of 'weird' and planted its feet firmly in the realm of 'kind of scary.' NPR takes a look at some bizarro bio-art:

During a recent workshop, hosted by the Machine Project in Los Angeles, Zurr guided a small group of aspiring bioartists through a "painting" exercise. First, [artist Ionat] Zurr sawed open the femur of a freshly-slaughtered cow. After choosing which cells she wanted, she "painted" them onto a three-dimensional scaffolding made of degradable polymer — a type of plastic. Over many weeks, the cells will grow over whatever shape the scaffolding takes, turning into a living sculpture of skin.

And now, according to the Loh Down, scientists have created creepy, crawly biobots:

...bio-engineers grow heart muscle cells, harvested from rats, onto thin plastic skeletons. The skeletons are patterned with protein blueprints that guide the cells into alignment. Once deposited, the cells mold around the plastic to form working muscle tissue.

The robots can flex their home-grown muscle tissue and move independently -- like living creatures. One such tissue robot, invented at Harvard, creeps across its Petri dish like an inchworm. Another one has a tail like a fish and can swim. A group at National University in Korea has designed a crab-like version that sidles about on six legs.

Because they're partly alive, these machines don't need external power. They just need food -- a simple sugar solution.

Seriously, haven't these guys seen "The Matrix"?

Granted, the art above probably raises more objections than the science, but it won't be long until scientists incorporate artificial intelligence and these half-living vessels -- and then the moral issues are bound to get messy.

Notice, stem cells feature somewhat in the first of these projects -- but neither one really needs them to push the limits of bioethics. As the editorial board notes in 'Life,' part two of its American Values series:

Last month's news that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin had modified adult skin cells to behave as embryonic stem cells seemed at first to have resolved this issue, but that's only true if you believe that the debate over stem cells, cloning and genetic modification is a subset of the debate over abortion. It is not. It is, or could become, the central life debate of our time, and depending on your perspective, the questions it raises are either exhilarating or horrifying.

You can read the piece and explore the series here.

The grim mood of the nation did not spare readers of the L.A. Times opinion pages this week. Tales of doom, gloom, war, corruption and the ruins of ancient societies dominated our traffic (which was light, so tell a friend about Opinion L.A. already). "A more perfect union," the opener for our American Values 2008 series, barely missed the top 10 and our second, "Life," made the top 20, so if you haven't started feasting on the whole series, do yourself a favor. ("Liberty" and "Justice" went live today and will be counted in next week's traffic.) Without further ado...

1. Symptoms of an economic depression By Steve Fraser
2. AWOL military justice By Morris D. Davis
3. Stonehenges all around us By Craig Childs
4. Is this really World War IV? By Peter Beinart
5. The Supreme Court's habeas hearing By the editorial board
6. A FISA fix By Michael B. Mukasey
7. F in science, A in self-esteem By the editorial board
8. Torture's blame game By Rosa Brooks
9. Two beautiful Dems stand before us ... By Jen Sullivan Brych and Matt Vespa
10. Big Oil buys Sacramento By Jamie Court and Judy Dugan

The the UN's 12-day green-fest in Bali and Al Gore's co-acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize have helped raise the heat on environmental policy. But there's smog hovering over that verdant hope — the political pressure has helped spark renewed interest in nuclear energy. IBM recently created a Nuclear Power Advisory Council, and as the San Diego Union-Tribune reports,

Spurred by concerns about global warming, a state Senate committee launched an inquiry yesterday into the potential of using nuclear power as a clean energy source.

Yesterday's special session in San Diego was the first time in two decades that the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications held hearings on nuclear power, said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, the panel's chairwoman.

The key question facing the committee was whether nuclear power could help the state meet its goal of slashing greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050.

“Before we talk about changing state policies, we want to find out what's going on in the world,” Kehoe said. “We haven't heard any information on nuclear power in 20 years.”

That's not a move The Times' editorial board favors:

The U.S. government allows nuclear plants to operate under a level of secrecy usually reserved for the national security apparatus. Last year, for example, about nine gallons of highly enriched uranium spilled at a processing plant in Tennessee, forming a puddle a few feet from an elevator shaft. Had it dripped into the shaft, it might have formed a critical mass sufficient for a chain reaction, releasing enough radiation to kill or burn workers nearby. [...]

...the U.S. government spends more on nuclear power than it does on renewables and efficiency. Taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear industry amounted to $9 billion 2006, according to Doug Koplow, a researcher based in Cambridge, Mass., whose Earth Track consultancy monitors energy spending. Renewable power sources, including hydropower but not ethanol, got $6 billion, and $2 billion went toward conservation.

That's out of whack.

Well, then ... tell us how you really feel.

At least four California universities applying for stem cell research grants from the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee might be knocked out of the running due to conflicts of interest. But instead of being your humdrum tale of conspiracies and backroom deals, the whole thing is starting to reek of multiple administrative brain farts. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Although the grant application called for letters of support from the deans or department chairmen, the conflict-of-interest policy for the stem cell institute also specifies that its board members "shall not make, participate in making, or in any way attempt to use their official position to influence a decision regarding a grant ..." [...]

The apparent contradiction in the rulebook is the kind of problem that critics say was built into the stem cell initiative passed by voters in 2004. [...]

It remains unclear what will happen if the grant applications are rejected. One option, according to sources, is to simply have the four universities reapply at a later date - a delay of at least six months. Another option would be to reject all of the grants and have everyone update their applications because of the confusion regarding the letter-of-recommendation rules.

If the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime, there may be a reason. The ICOC is still recovering from a conflict-of-interest controversy sparked this summer, according to The Scientist blog:

The conflict of interest occurred in August, when John Reed, a member of the CIRM's governing board, wrote a letter to Arlene Chiu, then CIRM's chief scientific officer, opposing the denial of a CIRM grant to a researcher at the San Diego-area Burnham Institute for Medical Research.

Reed, who is president and CEO of the Burnham Institute, wrote the seven page letter lobbying CIRM to reconsider its denial of a $638,000 SEED grant to David Smotrich, a researcher affiliated with the Burnham Institute but also the founder and president of a San Diego-area infertility clinic.... CIRM's conflict of interest rules prohibit board members from participating in any grant award discussions that involve their home institutions.

A state audit soon followed, along with calls for Reed and committee chair Robert Klein (who prompted him to send the letter) to resign. So in all likehood, the committee was a little twitchier than usual.

All the same, the four offending administrators are committee members and must have known about Reed's royal muck-up. At the very least, they should be familiar with the regulations — especially one so basic.

Which raises the question: Do we really want these guys in charge of millions of dollars of research money, anyway?

If you're one of those minorities whose ancestors hailed from the eastern hemisphere, figuring out what box to check in the "race/ethnicity" section of any form is a stressful experience requiring a quick soul-searching session. Now, though, the University of California hopes to ease that existential burden for UC applicants, raising the number of Asian/Pacific Islander categories from eight to 23. From The Daily Californian:

...the University of California will increase threefold the number of subgroups under the Asian and Pacific Islander categories on its admission application, officials announced Friday. [...]

Asian American categories will include Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Japanese, Pakistani, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian and “other Asian.”

The Pacific Islander category, previously under one heading, will now include Native Hawaiian, Guamanian/Chamorro, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian and “other Pacific Islander.”

And no, this is not about being PC. Or at least, not just about that. In between the Asian supernerd stereotype and the fact that Asians now outnumber whites across the UC system, many Asian minorities fall through the cracks.

It's kind of the reverse of the way whites assimilated: Asians are now being officially subcategorized in finer detail, while whites have blended from very distinctive communities — German, Italian, Polish and others — into this monochromatic mash. Part of that has to do with intermarriage: Many people know where their parents and grandparents came from, it's just that none of them came from the same place. That's generally still not the case for Asian Americans. 

Not that this ethnic differentiation is a new phenomenon. Go to any number of California colleges and you'll see the unsanctioned version: Pakistani students sit at one club table and the Pilipino students man their own. (Some Korean-Christian groups, however, do have a tendency to proselytize to unsuspecting freshmen.) Self-contained social networks spring out of those isolated groups, and it's debatable whether that's a good thing -- even if the alternative is the monstrously huge Asian American Association.

Oddly enough, Asian Americans aren't the only ones experiencing diversity/fragmentation issues. A recent Pew poll found that 37% of African Americans surveyed no longer saw blacks as a unified race. The question is, how exactly would they break blacks down by ethnicity? Is it region, or dialect, or country of origin?

What do shoe company moguls do with their free time? The Wall Street Journal finds out:

Late one spring afternoon last year, a mystery man sat in the back of a creative-writing seminar at Stanford. Evidently a student, he was much older than anyone else in the room. He was wearing a black blazer and white Nikes. He said his name was Phil.

As the days passed, the man's identity gradually came into focus. The instructor "made several vague allusions to Phil taking off in his private jet," recalls André Lyon, an English major enrolled in the class. And tales about Michael Jordan found their way into the man's literary discourse.

After a couple of weeks, a rumor began to circulate that the old dude in the Nikes was Philip H. Knight, the billionaire founder of the world's largest sportswear company.

It's hard to say which is more intriguing: The fact that a Nike exec wanted to be an English student, or the fact that he blended in so well.

He's not the only high-profile personality to go undercover for higher ed. This summer, Shakira took classes at UCLA:

She enrolled in a history of Western civilization course under her middle and last names, Isabel Mebarak, telling clueless classmates she was just visiting from Colombia.

"Oh, it was such a respite for me," Shakira recalls. "I felt that need to put a brake on everything, to escape from the celebrity life and reclaim a normal life for a while. It was very healthy for me."

College: the new secret rehab.

You can't blame stars for keeping educational endeavors below the radar. While some seem to do rather well by college, a la Julia Stiles, others find that their academic decisions become uncomfortably public, as happened with Mary-Kate Olsen's leave of absence from New York University. Most, though, generally seem to view college as something to do before their careers take them off to new heights, similar to normal students taking a year off to travel before facing the real world.

Not all stars view college as just an academic feather in their celebrity caps — Network World profiles a range of actors, singers and others in show biz who come from uber-geeky backgrounds. For these Tinseltowners, such as chemical engineer Terrence Howard, returning to college means picking up a career that was set aside when the acting (or singing, or directing) bug bit.

On the whole, this seems like a social positive: Personalities are making college cool. Forget Kabbalah or exotic tatoos — now a pop princess can flaunt her B.A. in art history.

The editorial board considers whether it's time to let USC run the Coliseum:

The Times has long promoted the Coliseum as the best place for an NFL team. Still, we have to hand it to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for recognizing the truth: The NFL and the stadium broke up long ago and aren't getting back together. At least, not as long as the commission acts as a marriage broker.

USC, of course, wants everything: the ability to run the Coliseum for the next four decades, lucrative naming rights, power to bring much-needed seating, lighting and facility improvements. And it wants it for a very long time. Would USC be able to demolish part of the stadium or to alter the look and feel of the historic structure with renovations?

The board doesn't like the GOP's new compassionless conservatism, on display at Wednesday night's debate. And the board wonders whether Lebanon's new leader can bring in democracy.

The University of Richmond's Carl Tobias takes a look at the newest member of the 9th Circuit. Mansoor Ijaz thinks neither Nawaz Sharif nor Benazir Bhutto would make for good Musharraf replacements. Columnists Joel Stein plots world domination, one drink at a time. And columnist Ronald Brownstein says there's still some fight left in the GOP.

Readers react to USC's proposal to leave the Coliseum for the Rose Bowl. Calabasas' Jonathan Kotler notes a trend of teams leaving the Coliseum: "The Los Angeles Chargers: gone. The Los Angeles Rams: gone. The Los Angeles Raiders: gone. The Los Angeles Lakers: gone. The Los Angeles Kings: gone. UCLA football: gone. USC basketball: gone. USC football: one foot out the door."