Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
Laura will be speaking at a function being held at the Reagan Ranch and was asked for a current picture. Laura always likes me to take her picture… no pressure?
What’s amazing to me is how little she has changed since I first knew her… she was 12.
Always beautiful.
Roger Freberg
Clarification: the picture on the left was taken over 7 years ago… the one on the right is current… but she hasn’t changed much… just gotten better
Just a few weeks ago or so, Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo confirmed that they had reduced the student population by 1100 or so. This was said to be due to the state budgetary ‘shortfall’ . (they’re getting more, just not as much as they were asking… in bureaucratic terms, this is referred to as a ‘short fall.’)
Now, the bureaucrats are planning to spend the taxpayer’s scarce resources teaching male-only students Engineering in Saudi Arabia. This according to one quote will ‘set terrorism’ back. Huh? If only it were true, I might agree if we were teaching philosophy or western literature or even if there was a ‘student’ exchange.
By the way, engineering are the skills one needs to know if one wants to blow up a building.As a reminder, Bin Laden was also an engineer.
Today, Cal Poly Provost William W. Durgin spun a great yarn in our local paper ( tough to find it on-line… but here it is ) entitled: “Cal Poly – Saudi Deal will adhere to U.S. Laws and reap untold benefits.” Why does this sound like a line from the evil Prince John in the tale Robin Hood,” Golden Days are ahead, Sir Guy!” ?
So, let’s take a little look at some of the Cal Poly spin:
Durgan: “JUC’s provost has advised us that the college will offer engineering to men and women as student and industry demand emerges.”
Translation: female engineering students and faculty are as likely to participate as finding snow in Saudi Arabia
Durgan: ” Project faculty and staff will be Cal Poly employees selected by the university.” Continue reading “Cal Poly’s Real Responsibility is at Home”
There’s a bunch of talk about various countries bowing out of the Olympic Games in order to ‘teach China a lesson.’ I wonder what kind of lesson that would be?
I remember the last time we boycotted the Olympic Games in 1980. This was at the time Jimmy Carter was President. It was merely a distraction from the reality of double digit inflation and having our butt handed to us around the world. I remember our poor Olympic athletes being paraded on the White House lawn and being presented a meaningless medal for their non-attendance in the games in Moscow.
Many say that Martin Van Buren (“Martin Van Ruin” by critics) was our worst President, but I would nominate Jimmy Carter the incompetent, micro managing peanut farmer.
Some european countries and some from our American House of Representatives feel ‘morally’ moved to keep their young people from competing in the Olympics.
I hope no one is stupid enough to believe that this boycott talk is all about “Tibet?” Ask yourself if these two things have any connection: first, Arab oil producing countries have been squawking about the recent crack down on Muslim Terrorists in China in preparation for the Olympics; and now, China has just provided the United Nations with evidence of Iran’s Nuclear Weapons ambitions. Is this ‘tit for tat?’
Let’s let the youth of the world fight it out in the Olympics as Baron Coubertin originally envisioned and not in the oil field. He wrote:
“the important thing in life is not victory, but the fight; the main thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.”
Let the Games begin!
Roger Freberg
CAL POLY–
Why am I not surprised that Cal Poly lost a big case and no one — including the local media here in San Luis Obispo covered it?
In truth, although I tend to view Cal Poly as the bigger problem, it was the entire California State University System that got whacked. It’s like the system has the same sort of drones working at the top, making all of the same sorts of bad decisions over and over again.
So, let’s take a look at what this case was all about:
‘The center ( the Center for Academic Freedom ) recently announced that it had reached a settlement with California State University system officials to eliminate problematic restrictions on student speech at all of its 23 campuses.
According to EP News Service, a federal judge suspended or limited aspects of the CSU speech policy last year, saying it contained serious constitutional problems.As part of the settlement, portions of the Cal State system “speech code,” the San Francisco State University Student Organization Handbook “speech code,” and the SFSU harassment policy will be modified to eliminate unconstitutional restrictions that have been misused by university officials.
“The problem with public universities today is that it’s departed largely from what it was supposed to be—a place to teach students to think, a marketplace for ideas,” Kellum said. “Instead, what we see today is more of a place of indoctrination, an incubator for leftist thought. They have very little patience for any view other than their own.”’
My experience in watching Cal Poly over the years is that they have a tendency to revert to form once they get their hands slapped in court. Regardless of what the court says, they put their own spin on it in practice.
It was nice to see them held accountable, even if it never reached the papers.
Roger Freberg
The debate rages as to whether we speak of the ‘culinary arts’ or bow to ‘food science’. I tend to believe it is a little bit of both.
The science of recipe development and preparation has taught us some wondrous things… but it is the chef as ‘artist’ that brings it all alive. It is the chef that widens our eyes and brings wonder to the senses. However, the chef now has help.
Science News has a new article on the laboratory technicians who have rediscovered what makes food savory and delicious. The prior dilemma was presented in the article thusly:
The relationship between scientists and chefs, or lack thereof, troubled the late physicist Nicholas Kurti. At a presentation for the Royal Society of London in 1969 he lamented, “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus, we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.”
If I had any criticism of the scientists approach, it would be towards their goal… to make things simpler, easier … omitting what makes life wonderful, such as eggs and butter. Simpler isn’t always better. Besides, years from now, we may learn that the true nutritional value of traditional ingredients was vastly underrated, while their poor substitutes were discovered to be either worthless or indeed harmful.
To me, cooking is still fun… it is still art… and unless science can help improve the taste or make the dining experience more enjoyable, then it’s value is diminished.
Roger Freberg