What the Hell Is Going On In California?

If you haven't seen the appalling video coming yesterday out of Davis, California, you must take a look.  Basically, student protesters are sitting on the university's quad, arms linked.  It's pretty much basic civil disobedience, nonviolent to a fault.  Along come the Davis and UC Davis police in what I can only describe as an unprovoked attack.  Photos of the attack are here at the town's newspaper.

This blogger excellently captures the mood of the attacking officer, how he sadistically hoses the students in the face, at point-blank range, with pepper spray.  It's truly, truly disturbing.  These are the people who are supposed to be protecting the students?  As an alum of UC Davis, I find this shameful

In a perfect example of high irony, I went to the UC Davis website to see what spin the university is putting on this, the lead on their site was totally unrelated to yesterday's attack and stated "A Community That Embraces Civility."  What?!  This is what it says:

A community that embraces civility

UC Davis is a proud community filled with innovators, risk takers, artists, scholars and dreamers. For a century, together, we’ve contributed to California while helping to address some of the world’s most pressing issues.

Whirlwind Week of Travel

I'm on my last day of twelve days of travel.  In that time I've been to California--twice--and Texas, and made connections in Salt Lake City often enough that the check-in gal at the Sky Club there recognized me.  I've had a surprisingly good run on this trips, with no misconnects, no canceled flights, and no flights that stood out as being unpleasant.

On the hotel front, I've overnighted in four different Hilton properties and a Crowne Plaza.  The standout among them was the Hilton Burlingame, near SFO airport.  Quite nice.  (I've written reviews for them over on Trip Advisor, http://www.tripadvisor.com/members-reviews/quequedub).

Now, time to head home, and back to the heat after a nice one-night break from it here in San Diego.  So hard to leave 70s when one knows 100 degrees is staring straight at me.