Category: In the News

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What Cal Poly’s dance with Saudi Arabia really Costs

What does Cal Poly hope to gain? And what is the true cost?Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has decided to provide an education to male Saudi nationals in Saudi Arabia over the objections of Cal Poly faculty, students and the larger community.

The benefits are clear to the Cal Poly administrators but rather murky to the rest of us. Why are we here and what is it really we are going to get out of all of this?

It seems reasonable to look under the surface and see who and what Saudi Arabia really is. First of all, it is clear that the Saudi’s really don’t know much about the outside world… as one report states:

Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization reporting on freedom of the press and of expression throughout the world, labeled Saudi Arabia one of the 15 “Enemies of the Internet.” Saudi Arabia is reported to have blocked over 400,000 websites

It’s also hard to grasp the plight of women in this part of the world until one looks at how women are viewed and treated at an early age. The case of 8 year old Najood Ali trying to divorce her 30 year old husband should have been a good focus for positive social change… but the Yemeni government found no compelling reasons to pursue this issue.

On a more chilling note in a CRS (Congressional Research Service) brief before Congress contained the following report:

In June 2002, in the course of briefing a high-level group that advises the
U.S. Department of Defense, an analyst from the Rand Corporation asserted
that “Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies” and added
that “the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners
to financiers.”

So, why again is Cal Poly involved in Saudi Arabia?

Roger Freberg

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Cal Poly : learning to do Bad by Doing

Shows Us the Conteract with Saudi ArabiaWell, the ever popular and hard to find President Warren Baker of Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo decided that he was going to proceed with his scheme of doing business with one of the smaller backwater gender apartheid universities of Saudi Arabia.

Very few people haven’t heard of this idea… because it has been covered nationally…. and most think this isn’t a great plan… except possibly those hiding in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, Warren Baker promised to show the world the ‘contract’ he is offering the Saudi’s …. as he is so proud of it.

Recently, however, it was determined that he ‘misspoke’ because one of his handlers corrected the statement that no contract will be available for viewing…. ever … by anyone.

Funny, Why would anyone so proud of a contract not be willing to show both the English and Arabic versions? It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure this out.

So now Saudi Arabia has its own American University from which great things can happen.

Years from now, I hope we remember who started this.

MORE on Uncoverslo.com 

Roger Freberg

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Olympics in Beijing should go forward!

Support the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing!

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

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Free Speech & Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

President Warren Baker is consistantly on the wrong side of history

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

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the Art & Science of Cooking!

Cooking is FUNdamental

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