Fly your U.S. flag today, to honor veterans of military service. November 11 was originally celebrated as Armistice Day after World War I’s armistice.
5 Comments | 
Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, Heroes, History, War, World War I | Tagged: Flag etiquette, Fly your flag, Veterans Day | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Nobel-winner economist Joseph Stiglitz is in Ethiopia. His comments on the value and the problems of economic development in order to fight poverty could provide important background or discussion material for your economics unit on international economics, international trade, and world financing systems.
2 Comments | Bell Ringers, Economics, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Government, Poverty, Warm-up exercises | Tagged: Africa, economic development, Ethiopia | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Will Okun’s question: Does it make a difference to a black student what color her teacher is?
Some students say it makes no difference; some students vigorously argue that black male teachers push black kids harder, but understand them better.
Good, thoughtful post, lots of comments — at Nicholas Kristof’s blog at the New York Times site.
1 Comment | Civil Rights, Education, Education blogs, Education quality, Education success, Teaching | Tagged: , Education, Race, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Global warming a hoax? No, the hoax was the claim that there was a study that said global warming is a hoax.
4. GLOBAL WARMING HOAX: OR WAS IT JUST A HOAX OF A HOAX?
There was a wild scramble on Wednesday about the death of the manmade global warming theory, except the authors didn’t exist, nor their institution, nor the journal. It took two minutes to find this out, so what was the purpose? Just a prank?
What was it?
Nature reports the hoax site, looking like the website of a research journal, took the article down (that’s the link to the article; it’s gone, as you can see. The hoax included a purported article and a purported editorial from the journal.
But nothing checked out. The journal doesn’t exist. The researchers probably are bogus, too, nor does their purported institution/department exist.
Rush Limbaugh fell for it, though, as did several others who profess to be skeptical of global warming.
Certainly a hoax — but by whom? For what purpose?
In the meantime, junk science purveyor Steven Milloy claims that it was the skeptics of global warming who smoked out the hoax, not the many scientists who immediately smelled fishiness. Does he suggest the name of even one warming “skeptic” who called it? No.
Did Limbaugh apologize yet? Do you think he’ll be more skeptical next time?
Update, November 11, 2007: Nature interviews the hoax creator and perpetrator. Explanation, excerpt, and links to the article.
19 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, History, Hoaxes, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: Climate change hoax hoax, denialism, Global warming | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
LaVarr Webb’s UtahPolicy.com features a roundup of comments from blogs on the Utah election, and the referendum defeat of vouchers:
Blog Watch
Lots of reaction to the voucher referendum outcome: See BoardBuzz, Steve Urquhart, SLCSpin, The Utah Amicus, Dynamic Range, The Senate Site, Paul Rolly, Out of Context, Reach Upward, COL Takashi, Jeremy’s Jeremiad, Davis County Watch, Salt Blog, and Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.
Utah is a small state, blessed with television, radio and newspaper outlets that perform way beyond what the population should expect. Webb’s site tends to summarize most of the important political stuff every day.
It is exactly that type of information that led to the defeat of the voucher plan, I think. More later, maybe. Go take a look at Webb’s link to a CATO Institute commentary; voucher advocates are not giving up in any way.
Leave a Comment » | Education, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: political news sources, Politics, Utah, voucher referendum | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Kathy Dopp’s project keeps turning up reasons to watch out for electronic voting machines, and other tampering with elections.
Below the fold I copy a recent e-mail from Dopp’s group. If true, the allegations here paint a sad picture of the U.S. as a nation plunging to third-world status in important areas, such as democratic elections.
I wish it were different, but for myself, I have little confidence that either the 2000 or 2004 election was straight up. Was it crooked enough to skew results? Let me know what you think in comments.
Dopp’s e-mail follows: Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Elections, Government, Law, Lessons of history, Voting Rights Act | Tagged: 2004, Constitution, Elections, fraud, Ohio, Voting Rights Act | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is another in an occasional series of posts dissecting the claims made by JunkScience purveyor Steven Milloy’s “100 things you should know about DDT.” What I find in this list is a lot of deception, misleading claims, and general unjustified vitriol. In this post I’m looking at Milloy’s point #10.
Milloy said:
10. Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote “Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.” DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the “control”” birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.
Considering Carson’s careful citing of studies on all sides of the issue, and her use of sources dating back 30 years and more, it would be difficult for her to have “represented the science of DDT erroneously.” Carson got the science right. Milloy doesn’t even get the quote of Carson right, however, deleting her main point, and editing it to set up a straw man argument which misleads unwary readers.
Carson represented the science faithfully. Milloy simply dissembles in his accusation that she got it wrong.
In fact, Carson offered more than 50 pages of citations to studies, virtually everything available on DDT and the other chemicals she wrote about, up to the time of publication. Carson had started working on the issue in 1948, and worked almost solely on the work that became Silent Spring between 1959 and the book’s publication. None of the studies she cited has been retracted. Most of the studies were determined to be accurate in follow-up studies.
I discuss this at some length, below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »
17 Comments | Accuracy, Cost of Green, DDT, Environmental protection, Green Politics, Junk science, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Cost of Green, DDT, Eggshell Thinning, Green Politics, James B. DeWitt, Junk science, Rachel Carson, Science, Silent Spring, Steve Milloy, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Some kind soul nominated this blog for “best education blog” in some award process last year, but that was as far as this blog got. Several good education blogs were nominated, but I wasn’t impressed with the final standings. My candidates didn’t rank 1, 2, or 3.
So, should we swear off blog award? Heck, no! As Roger Beynon would say, everything someone says has potential value. And really, there is a lot of good stuff in a lot of these blogs.
So get on over to the 2007 Weblog Awards page on education, and check out the blogs in the running (do it now — you can vote tonight and tomorrow).
One blog excited me a lot — not because it covers education particularly well, but because it’s done by high school students. It’s solid, and it should give your students an idea of just what they can do. Even if you don’t check out the nominatees, go see the James Logan Courier.
Meanwhile, here are the ten finalists — only one of which I link to on this blogroll, which is a clue that I need to get out more, and a clue that there are a lot of high quality blogs out there:
Finalist Links
The Jose Vilson
Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs
Frumteacher
Hobo Teacher
NYC Educator
Education Week
Matthew K. Tabor, Education for the Aughts
James Logan Courier
The Miss Rumphius Effect
IvyGate
1 Comment | Education, Education assessment, Education blogs, Student projects, Weblogs | Tagged: Education, Education blogs, Education reform | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We get fun e-mail; some of you will take great heart:
Dear Liberal Carnivalers,
Blue Steel over at Pollyticks.com has your bi-weekly fix of the all that’s good in the liberal blogosphere. As always it’s great to see some new faces amidst all our old friends.
I also wanted to mention that I’ll be headed to DC this weekend. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has invited myself and several other bloggers down to participate in organizing, fund raising and lobbying training, not to mention help AU celebrate it’s 60th anniversary. I’m not sure who all is coming but I’m told that among those attending will be Blue Gal, DCup, Phil Plait, and PZ Myers. Wonder if I can finally convince DCup and Phil to host Carnival of the Liberals? In any event it’ll be great to meet so many of my bloggy friends in real life.
Speaking of carnival hosts… Next bi-week’s edition of Carnival of the Liberals is the very last edition of our 2nd year. Hosting will be BAC from Yikes! who will also be attending AU’s DC blogger meet-up. To commemorate AU’s 60th anniversary we’ll be making this edition dedicated to AU. Carnival of the Liberals 52 is seeking submissions on separation of church and state. As usual we’ll run the ten best submissions (as determined by BAC) but we’ll also be running posts from any of the DC attendees who wish to contribute.
Liberally yours,
— Leo (“tng”) Lincourt
http://www.neuralgourmet.com
http://www.carnivaloftheliberals.comThe Big Block of Links
2 Comments | Patriotism, Politics, Weblogs | Tagged: Carnival of the Liberals, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Have you Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana economics teachers registered for Evening at the Fed?
Evening at the Fed
Dinner and Discussion for High School Teachers
Dallas, November 29, 2007
Houston, December 4, 2007
San Antonio, December 11, 2007
El Paso, December 13, 2007
Financial Markets: Innovations and Challenges
The 2007 Evening at the Fed series will feature Jeffery Gunther, assistant vice president and senior economist in the Dallas Fed’s Financial Industry Studies Department. Gunther will speak on factors leading up to the recent financial market turmoil, in particular the role of nontraditional financial instruments. He will address such questions as:
- Are financial innovations, such as hedge funds, forever changing the financial landscape?
- What happened in the U.S. sub prime real estate market?
- What does the consumer need to understand about nontraditional financial instruments?
- What impact do these new financial instruments have on the US economy?
Join us at a location convenient for you. The fee to attend is $15, which includes dinner and materials. Space is limited and the registration fee must be received by the cut-off date.
This would probably be a good session for government and U.S. history teachers, too.
Registration details after the fold.
2 Comments | Economics, Education, Federal Reserve Bank, Free market economics, Government, History, Personal finance | Tagged: Dallas Fed, Economics, Education, Government, Teachers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Mario Capecchi’s story of his mother’s arrest by the Gestapo, and his life on the streets of Italy as a young boy, only piqued interest in the story of his winning a Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, earlier this year.
It is such a great story, people set out to write it down in detail. Some of the details discovered, however, don’t quite square with historical records.
A group of reporters with the Associated Press uncovered the discrepancies. Realizing that the story comes from the memory of a very young child, so far the headlines and the stories have been corrective, but gently and adoringly so.
The story Capecchi has told repeatedly over the years in speeches and interviews begins when he is 3 and the Gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s secret police, snatch his mother before his very eyes and dispatch her to Dachau concentration camp. The peasant family that takes him in abandons him and he spends four years wandering about northern Italy – a street urchin, alone and begging for food.
At war’s end – on the boy’s ninth birthday – mother and son are reunited in the hospital ward where he is being treated for malnutrition and typhoid. They set sail for America where he flourishes, embarks on a brilliant research career – and goes on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine.
But The Associated Press, which set out to chronicle his extraordinary story in greater detail, has uncovered several inconsistencies and unanswered questions, chief among them whether his mother was in Dachau, and whether he really was for a long time a homeless street child.
You can read the full story at The Salt Lake Tribune.
This is a classic case. Memory differs from the facts. Human minds fill in details that would otherwise leave a mystery, and the details filled in differ from the details that can be corroborated.
This is part of what keeps history lively.
We see here also a demonstration that there is much we can never really know for sure. Historians work from imperfect records in the best of circumstances.
The director of the Dachau Memorial, Barbara Distel, said women weren’t imprisoned at Dachau until September 1943 – more than two years after Capecchi says his mother was arrested. She also said only Jewish women from eastern Europe were held in Dachau’s satellite camps.
”I do remember – I remember the Gestapo coming to the Wolfsgruben chalet,” Capecchi told AP in the interview, conducted days after his Nobel Prize was announced. ”It’s sort of like a photograph. I can tell you how many people were in the room, which ones were in uniform and which ones weren’t. Just boom. It’s there.”
Pressed to explain how he could be certain he was just 3 1/2 at the time and remember it so clearly, he stood by his account.
The big question we want answered here is this: How can we get more great people like Mario Capecchi? Can we get a few Nobelists out of the current generation of children?
No one proposes revisiting war to make kids great, so the fascination with Capecchi’s childhood is more academic, if still for inspiration.
In the end, we have a mystery. How did Capecchi get to be such a great man? There remains that great chapter near the end of the book; early chapters are missing.
Perhaps AP could put a team of reporters on a story to explain exactly how Capecchi’ s research explains what it does, and what it means down the road. That’s a story that needs to be told, too.
2 Comments | Accuracy, Capturing history, Heroes, Historic documents, History, Research, Science, World War II | Tagged: Biography, History, Mario Capecchi, Nobel Prize in Medicine, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Vouchers are dead in Utah, for the moment.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports “Vouchers go down in flames“:
Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, rejecting what would have been the nation’s most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout.
“Tonight, with the eyes of the nation upon us, Utah has rejected this flawed voucher law,” said state School Board Chairman Kim Burningham. “We believe this sends a clear message. It sends a message that Utahns believe in, and support, public schools.”
More than 60 percent of voters were rejecting vouchers, with about 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial results. The referendum failed in every county, including the conservative bastion of Utah County.
In the face of colossal failure, voucher supporters desperately searched for a scapegoat on which to hang it — anything other than the manifold problems of vouchers:
Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne – who bankrolled the voucher effort – called the referendum a “statewide IQ test” that Utahns failed.
“They don’t care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box,” Byrne said.
Funny, from my conversations with people in Utah, I got the idea they opposed vouchers specifically because the voucher plan would damage schools, and that would in turn hurt the kids.
I suppose it depends on what the definition of “care about kids” is.
Utah, the most conservative state in the nation, has strong teacher organizations, but nothing like a union that leads strikes and is not itself populated with conservative Republicans. Also favorable to vouchers, the Utah legislature is heavily Republican, with voucher supporters in most leadership positions. Millionaire Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., also pushed for the vouchers, stacking the state’s political powers in favor of vouchers. Such facts cannot get in the way of the desperation to deny them voucher supporters show.
Doug Holmes, a key voucher advocate and contributor, said, “We started hugely in the hole and it’s always been the case. The unions have done this in four different states, where they take the strategy of confusion to the people.”
But Holmes said, “You don’t run away from something because the odds are stacked against you.”
Odds stacked against vouchers? It’s not the voters who are confused, Mr. Holmes.
Voucher supporters blame even their friends and supporters, and offer headline writers the chance to use an avalanche of clichés with a promise that vouchers will rise again, perhaps in the old Confederacy:
Both sides, at one point, embraced the governor, who Byrne blasted Tuesday for his lukewarm backing.
“When he asked for my support [for governor] he told me he is going to be the voucher governor. Not only was it his No. 1 priority, it was what he was going to be all about,” Byrne said. “He did, I think, a very tepid job, and then when the polls came out on the referendum, he was pretty much missing in action.”
Byrne said the referendum defeat may have killed vouchers in Utah, but “There are other freedom oriented groups in other states – African-Americans in South Carolina are interested in it.”
Got that, South Carolina? Vampire vouchers are headed your way. Stock up on garlic, wooden stakes and silver bullets.
Oh, and don’t forget the Oreo cookies. Get lots of milk, too.
3 Comments | Economics, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, School vouchers | Tagged: denialism, Education, Elections, Politics, School vouchers, Utah referendum | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Sometime tomorrow, November 7, 2007, this blog will record its 300,000th “view.”
Thanks, again.
I wonder: Does any of this have any good effect?
6 Comments | Administrivia, Weblogs | Tagged: Millard Fillmore's Bathtub | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Washington Monthly always deserves reading. The on-line presence is almost as good as the magazine was back in its very fertile youth. Generally it has good writing and good thinking, and there is almost always a good bunch of fun — sometimes the fun even comes with good writing and good thinking.
And now, the magazine has announced its Golden Wingnut Awards, the top five worst posts on the web:
- John Hinderaker: “It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius….”
- Glenn Reynolds: “Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a ‘quagmire’ were wrong….Nah.”
- Michelle Malkin: “The Defeatocrats Cheer”
- Ann Althouse: “Let’s take a closer look at those breasts.”
- Kim du Toit: “The Pussification of the Western Male”
Congratulations, wingnuts! And special congratulations to Power Line’s John Hinderaker, who ran away with first place by a wide margin — and deservedly so. (More at Washington Monthly)
You can check out the whole list of nominees here.
Now, go vote in your local election.
Tip of the old scrub brush to reader Bernarda, who continues to mine intelligent comment from the internet.
1 Comment | Humor, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Weblogs | Tagged: Golden Wingnut, Humor, worst posts | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is election day in much of the U.S. In Utah, voters have a referendum on vouchers to take money from public schools to give to students to attend private schools. This is the first state-wide test of vouchers anywhere.
I think vouchers will be voted down, but either way, I wish there were more, serious national coverage of the story in Utah. Public education has refused to back down from scurrilous and often false claims against the schools, and parents and educators have fought a gallant, fact-filled campaign against Utah’s voucher proposal. Utah voters are traditionally among the better-educated, better-informed, and better-voting people. Known as a conservative stronghold, Utah will probably vote to put this voucher program in the trash can.
The rest of the nation could benefit from knowing more about the reasons this proposal fails, if it does — or why it succeeds, if lightning strikes the way Richard Eyre prays it will.
Marchers protesting the Vietnam War in 1968 used to chant “The whole world is watching.” If only it were true today.
Whatever your views, go to the polls if there is an election in your town, and vote. Your vote will count, and it angers and frustrates the big money interests who hope you won’t vote, so their campaign contributions and, perhaps, outright bribes, will have more clout. Go vote.
5 Comments | Education, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: Education, Elections, Politics, School vouchers, Utah referendum | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog archives for the year 2007.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 