miscellaneous

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Underpaid

Byuclafaculty

De Neve Plaza California’s labor commissioner announced today that she has ordered three contractors to pay more than $1.8 million forviolations in public works projects at UCLA, Saddleback Community College in Orange County and the Global Green Generational Charter School in Pacoima… Tile contractor B.A. Marble Granite Inc. was ordered to pay $539,051 in wages, $4,693 in apprenticeship training funds and $652,600 in fines for the failure to pay 55 employees the proper wage for installing tile in bathrooms at the De Neve Residence Halls project at the UCLA campus… Full story at http://business-news.thestreet.com/daily-news/story/north-hollywood-tile-contractor-ordered-pay-nearly-12m-labor-violations-work-ucla-housing/1  The official statement from the labor…

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More on the UCLA-Wake Forest University Monkey Dispute

Byuclafaculty

An earlier post noted that there is a dispute between UCLA and Wake Forest U over joint operation of a primate research center.  You can find the earlier post – and a note that yours truly really doesn’t have the story on what led to the conflict – at:http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/03/complicated-monkey-business-involving.html The parties have been told that if they don’t agree to avoid a jury trial and allow a judge to decide the case, it will be a long time before a trial can be scheduled.  The report can be found at:http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_326729b0-b741-11e2-9eca-001a4bcf6878.html

UC Seems to Be Opting Out (for now)

Byuclafaculty

Inside Higher Ed today has a lengthy article on attempts to measure the “value added” of college education.  It notes that a group of public universities to which UC belongs has been promoting various forms of testing to measure student value added – under pressure from state legislatures from around the country.  (Value added testing involves giving tests to incoming freshmen and again when they graduate to see if their scores have risen.)  Other forms of testing are also being promoted.  UC has – so far – opted out of following the herd and participating, according to the article.  Will…

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How to be really famous at Harvard

Byuclafaculty

If you are wondering what he said, it had to do with Prof. Ferguson’s recent “contribution” to the advance of macroeconomic analysis: Well-known Harvard professor Niall Ferguson apologized Saturday for what he called “stupid and tactless remarks” suggesting sexual orientation influenced the polices of famed economist John Maynard Keynes.On Thursday, Ferguson suggested that the British economist lacked foresight about future generations because he was childless, and that he was childless because he was gay. Ferguson made the comments during a conference in Carlsbad, Calif., during a discussion on Keynes’ famous line, “The long run is a misleading guide to current…

More So Than Ever

Byuclafaculty

Last week, we noted that you can enhance your reputation for erudition by starting your answers to any question with “So…”  http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-to-answer-any-question-with.html It turns out that was only half the story.  You can double the impression by starting all your questions with “So…” Correction: Actually, it was the program of 5-5-2013, not 5-4-2013, although the title on the video says otherwise.  But, so what?

Technical Frustrations With Missing Links

Byuclafaculty

There are occasional technical frustrations involved in blogging.  Some are inherent in the process.  We often provide links to articles or other items.  If those links change, or if the items are taken down, the links will no longer operate.  So if you go back to past postings, you may encounter such missing links and we cannot in general remedy that situation. Where is it? In some cases, however, we have posted audios or videos of public meetings such as Regents sessions.  Some of those postings were originally put on a Facebook page maintained by yours truly.  It appears that…

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Slow Growth

Byuclafaculty

Replacement for the Grizzly Bear on the state flag? The California Dept. of Finance regularly estimates population of the state and its local jurisdictions.  It estimates that the state’s population grew at a 0.8% rate in 2012.  Not surprisingly, the faster growing areas within the state are generally those around the Silicon Valley. It’s not an accident that the making of demographic estimates is assigned to the Dept. of Finance because population growth has a variety of effects on the state budget.  California actually has been growing at roughly the national rate since the end of the Cold War when…

How to answer any question with appropriate erudition

Byuclafaculty

Yours truly first noticed that truly smart people – particularly those who make presentations at UCLA seminars – began a year or two ago starting the answer to any question with “So…”  Then it spread to public radio.*Now radio commentator Harry Shearer has a new feature on his “Le Show” program called the “So’s of the Week.” Here are the last two weeks of so’s: So…  What do you think? *http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2011/12/02/so-it-turns-out-that-everyones-starting-sentences-with-so/

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UCLA History: Mortality – Then and Now

Byuclafaculty

This December 1954 photo shows a mock funeral held in protest of a decision by the university administration to change the selection process of the editor of the Daily Bruin. There isn’t much about this issue on the web other than Wikipedia.  Apparently, the administration considered the newspaper to be controlled by left-wingers and demanded that editors be elected.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Bruin On a more contemporary – but somewhat related – note, many faculty are users of Gmail and other Google services (Picassa, YouTube, etc.).  In some cases, faculty forward their UCLA email automatically to Gmail or they use Gmail as a…

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Justice?

Byuclafaculty

There are all kinds of courts. UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran was ordered Friday to stand trial on felony charges stemming from a laboratory fire that killed staff research assistant Sheharbano “Sheri” Sangji more than four years ago. Concluding a preliminary hearing that began late last year, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, believed to be the first such prosecution involving a U.S. academic lab accident. Harran, 43, is charged with willfully violating state occupational health and safety standards. If convicted, he faces up to four and a half years…