Designers correct: Font choice affects grades

January 12, 2008

Put your paper into Georgia, a serif font, and your grades may rise.

Some enterprising fellow at Fadtastic did the research (now available here in archives), and discovered Georgia-fonted papers tend to get A grades, Times Roman-fonted papers get A- grades, and Trebuchet-fonted papers get B grades (“The Secret Lives of Fonts).

Of course, that’s what the type designers, book designers and web designers have been telling us for 20 years — a serif font is easier to read, and makes the reader feel more at ease. When graders feel good, the paper gets a good grade. That’s logical.

Georgia Font examples, from Wikipedia

Georgia Font examples, from Wikipedia

I also discovered that when faxed to news editors, sans serif fonts get better play. If the press release is legible, it goes farther.

And, when I was taking broadcast courses, my grades rose significantly when my IBM Correcting Selectric II arrived, and I started doing all my scripts in Orator font. The teacher, an active newsman at the time, graded higher when he recognized the font more — it was roughly the same font on the teleprompter at his station.

Pick your font and your transmission method accordingly.

The author of this non-scientific study is a web designer, of course.

I’ll bet you’ll find that conclusion, backed with some sort of research, in the book design and web design texts.

Remember when we all used typewriters, and such choices were not options at all?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Graceful Flavor.

5 Comments | Business, Presentations, Student projects, Technology, Weblogs, Writing | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas State Historical Association moves; new home at the University of North Texas

January 12, 2008

110 years was enough.

The Texas State Historical Association will move to Denton, Texas, and a new association with the powerful history department at the University of North Texas, after 110 years in Austin in a home on the campus of the University of Texas.

Holly K. Hacker wrote the details for a story in The Dallas Morning News for January 12, 2008:

The association’s president said UNT is a logical choice. Among its selling points, UNT has the state’s biggest program in Texas history and a university press that publishes many books on Texas subjects. The association also has four fellows and a former president from UNT.

“We felt that UNT not only made the best offer in terms of what it could give us, but it was also the best fit on a day-in, day-out basis,” said Frank de la Teja, president of the association.

The group publishes a scholarly journal called Southwestern Historical Quarterly. And anyone who’s ever Googled the Battle of the Alamo, Juneteenth or some other Texas subject is probably familiar with the association’s Handbook of Texas Online, a comprehensive encyclopedia that averages 4 million page views a month.

Details are still being worked out, but UNT hopes the association will move to campus in the fall, said Michael Monticino, associate dean of UNT’s College of Arts and Sciences. He said the university is poised to pay for renovations, worth about half a million dollars, and to contribute about $200,000 a year for other expenses.

The move may be good news for history teachers closer to Denton, including those in Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Irving, Tyler and Abilene. Chiefly the move indicates how Texas’s higher education quality has spread out well beyond Austin and College Station, homes of the first branches of the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, respectively.

Full story below the fold (as insurance against the whims of electronic archivists at the Dallas Morning News).

TSHA’s annual meeting will be in Corpus Christi, March 5 through 8, 2008. Educators can register for as little as $35.00.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Education, Higher education, History, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Park your camel, the music’s begun

January 12, 2008

As long as we’re in Mali anyway, why not arrive a couple of days early for this other music festival? Michael Kessler writes about the Festival du Chameau in the Sydney Morning Herald, “The sound of the desert blues”:

A week ago, when the doctor was jabbing me with yellow fever, polio and hepatitis shots and supplying malaria tablets, I’d tried imagining what a camel festival would look like. The Festival du Chameau [in its third year in 2008] is the brainchild of Tinariwen, the international darlings of world music – a group of Touareg nomadic musicians, purveyors of the desert blues, whose political past combined with their hypnotic electric guitars make them local heroes in this, the Adrar des Iforas region of Mali.

Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Stephanie Nolen accompanied a group of Inuit musicians to Mali, documented in a blog for the newspaper, Trail to Timbuktu; from her reports, we know the festival is underway, music is on the dunes:

There’s no down-in-front with a camel, really.

The 8th Festival in the Desert began a couple of hours ago, with several thousand people sitting and standing in the cool, white sand at the edge of the oasis at Essekane. The sun set just as the event kicked off, silhouetting robed men, veiled women and camels on all the surrounding ridges. On the small, raised stage there were speeches by notables including the local governor and Mali’s Minister of Culture.

Then the music began, with the opening provided by Tamnana, a traditional ensemble of men and women from Essekane who drum, chant, clap and ululate. They’re a big hit with the locals, and it turns out that demonstrations of musical appreciation hereabouts take the form of camel tricks. When the spirit moves them, nomads on camelback suddenly charge down from the dunes to the front of the stage, where they coax their camels down to “walk” on their front knees – a much-admired feat. Or they dismount and launch sudden sword fights with phantom opponents, before swinging back up and charging the camel back and forth in front of the stage a few times. It’s the Tuareg version of the mosh pit, and it’s magical to watch, but it does tend to blot out the action on the stage.

Inuit performers in the sand at Essakane Festival, Mali, 2008 - photo by Stephanie Nolen, Toronto Globe and Mail

Inuit performers from Canada, in the sands at the Essakane Festival, Mali, 2008; photo by Stephanie Nolen, Toronto Globe and Mail.

News still travels slowly out of Mali’s desert, though. Most of the news about the Mali Festival in the Desert comes in the form of festival veterans spreading the music, in other, far-flung venuues.

Influences of the Essakane Festival of the Desert reach Salina, Kansas, where the Salina Journal talks about the music of Toubab Crewe, a group of North Caronlians who have performed at the big Mali festival in the past.

Oregon feels it, too: MacArthur Foundation grant recipient Corey Harris, a veteran bluesman whose work was featured in the PBS series on the blues, especially his work in Mali with the late Ali Farka Toure, performs at the Rogue Valley Blues Festival in Ashland, Oregon, on January 18 (that’s the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune, not Mali Tribune).

Mali, and Africa, have much more than just these few festivals. Why should we concern ourselves with the Essakane festival at all? Africa. PopMatters carries a column by journalist Mark Reynolds, reviewing events and arts in Africa in 2007, with a look to 2008. It’s a survey of events and publications, but it’s a good backgrounder for a high school student in Africa concerns, an article that should suggest connections to be made in geography, history, government and economics courses.

Thanks to Ann at Peoples Geography for the correction — Sydney Morning Herald.

1 Comment | Africa, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Lesson plans, Music, World history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Festival au Desert Essakane! January 10-12, 2008

January 10, 2008

BBC’s internet services carried this slide and sound account of the 2007 Essakane festival in far off Mali; this is one music festival I would really like to attend. Snippets of songs crop up on NPR or PRI (especially The World), and on PBS, and in record stores with really savvy staff — or where Putumayo discs are on sale. Everything I have heard from these festivals is very, very good.

Robert Plant helped make it famous with his 2003 performance. But its fame is relative; it’s famous only among a select group of people — those who have heard the music.

[Alas, Vodpod died, and the video that I had captured via that service seems to appear nowhere else on the web.  If you should find the piece by Paula Dear which the BBC broadcast in 2007, please note it in comments.]

Vodpod videos no longer available. from news.bbc.co.uk posted with vodpod

.

The festival is set for January 10-12 in 2008. Who is playing? Where are news stories? Where are the CDs? Here’s the official website.

Geography teachers, think of the possibilities this festival offers for fun in the classroom! Adam Fisher wrote about it for the New York Times a couple of years ago:

My real aim is Essakane, an obscure desert oasis a half-day’s drive beyond Timbuktu, and the site of what’s billed as the “most remote music festival in the world.” It’s a three-day Afro-pop powwow held by the Tuareg, the traditionally nomadic “blue people” of the Sahara.

It’s a tribe often feared for the banditry of its rebels and respected for the fact that it has never really been conquered. Historically its great power came from its role in the trans-Saharan trade in gold, slaves and salt. Even now, Tuareg caravans make the 15-day journey south from the northern salt mines to Timbuktu on the Niger River. They rest their camels during the day and use the stars to navigate at night. The skin tint of the nomads comes from the indigo dye they use for their turbans and robes, which leaves a permanent stain.

What more exciting stuff do you have in your classroom on the Tuareg? Does it resonate better with your teenagers than this story would?

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Africa, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Lesson plans, Maps, Music, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

New project, less time for blogging

January 9, 2008

When do you ever see anyone say, “Finished that, now I have much more time to devote to writing on this blog?”

You won’t see it here, today, either.

A new project beckons — exciting, important, low-pay and time consuming — and I’m off.  I’ll try to keep the water in Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub warm and comfortable, at least.

Readers can help out, with comments.  For example, right now the post on the hoax quiz on Hillary Clinton quotes is hotter’n a three-dollar pistol — but no one’s commenting.  I can’t tell where the hits are coming from.   It would be nice if some of the viewers would at least comment on why they dropped by.

A few readers are engaged in conversations on a few different threads — good stuff, mostly, even with internetbloggy bluster thrown in.

The rate of posts is likely to drop from last month.  I’m off for much of the rest of the afternoon, and I’ll be in the library this evening with the younger son (though, now that I think about it, the library has wi-fi; hmmmm).

Talk amongst yourselves.  Register for the Stanton Sharp history seminar February 9 at SMU.  I’ll post details about another Dallas history seminar set for January 26, perhaps this evening, and about another, really wonderful symposium coming up in April.

Thank you for reading; thank you for commenting.  You history, economics and civics teachers, thank you for everything.  You students, thank you for working not to repeat the errors in history.

Thank you.

2 Comments | Administrivia, Personal | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bathtubs in the White House 15 years before Fillmore

January 8, 2008

Is this the information which confirms Mencken’s writing was really a hoax? Can we confirm there was a bathtub in the White House before Millard Fillmore got there?

America’s premier building historian, William Seale, lists a timeline at the White House Historical Association that shows showers and baths installed in the White House about 15 years before Millard Fillmore could have the chance:

Caption from Smithsonian: An 1830s hand pump shower similar to those once used in the White House bathing room. Smithsonian Institution

Caption from Smithsonian: An 1830s hand pump shower similar to those once used in the White House bathing room. Smithsonian Institution

 

Running water was introduced into the White House in 1833. Initially its purpose was to supply the house with drinking water and to fill reservoirs for protection against fire. An engineer named Robert Leckie built the system of reservoirs, pumps, and pipes that supplied the White House, and the Treasury, State, War, and Navy buildings with water. Very soon, a “bathing room” was established in the east wing to take advantage of the
fine water supply. The room featured a cold bath, a shower, and a hot bath heated by coal fires under large copper boilers.

Source: William Seale, The President’s House, 199-200. (Photo: Hand pump shower, similar to those installed in the 1830s White House; from the Smithsonian’s collection)

In 1833, Andrew Jackson started his second term.  Regardless when in 1833 that plumbing work was done, Jackson was the president.

Seale also has Franklin Pierce improving the plumbing upstairs, in the family quarters (which may be the source of Scholastic’s claim that Pierce put the first tub in):

The 1850s saw many improvements and expansions to the mansion’s existing conveniences. By this time many Americans who had gaslight wondered how they had ever lived without it. President Zachary Taylor ordered an enlargement of the gas system into the White House’s offices, family quarters, and basement. Millard Fillmore determined that the house should be comfortable in any season and had the heating system improved. The White House of Franklin Pierce came to represent the best domestic technology of its time (1853). The heating plant was modified again with the addition of a hot-water furnace that was more efficient and healthful because the air was warmed directly by coils rather than “cooked” from outside the air chamber. Pierce also made significant improvements to the plumbing and toilet facilities, including the installation of a bathroom on the second floor with the first permanent bathing facilities. The new bathroom was luxurious in having both hot and cold water piped in. Before 1853 bathing on the second floor required portable bathtubs, and kettles of hot water had to be hauled up from the existing east wing bathing room.

Source: William Seale, The President’s House, 283, 291, 315-16; and William Seale, The White House: The History of an American Idea, 90.

And wouldn’t you know it: Seale is a native of Beaumont, Texas. It takes a Texan to get the details to dispel these hoaxes.

 

2 Comments | H. L. Mencken, History, Hoaxes, Humor, Millard Fillmore, Presidents, White House | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Warren Chisum special: Bill gives Texas kids “right” to Bible classes

January 8, 2008

Cleaning up the mess left by the Texas Lege: Texas kids need help on history, Texas history, math, English and science, according to test scores. Texas colleges are fighting a wave of kids who graduate high school and head off to college without the key tools they need in writing and calculating.Texas Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa

But Republican state Rep. Warren Chisum has awarded them a “right” to get a Bible class, the better to avoid preparation for college, I suppose. No kidding.

Molly Ivins’ Ghost is pounding on your door trying to get your attention. From the San Antonio Express:

A new law soon will require all Texas public school districts to offer a Bible as Literature course if 15 or more students express interest, but one San Antonio public school has been offering such a course for more than 30 years.

Churchill High School in the North East Independent School District has offered the Bible as Literature since the 1970s, when English teacher Frances Everidge pioneered the course. Last year, Reagan High School, also in the NEISD, added one. New Braunfels High School has offered the course for a year, and Seguin High School will begin offering it in the fall.

Last spring, the Legislature passed House Bill 1287, along with two other bills regarding religion in public schools. HB 1287, which Gov. Rick Perry signed into law last summer, states that all school districts must offer the course as an elective at the high school level by the 2009-10 school year.

Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee the bill’s author, said that if 15 or more students express interest in the Bible as Literature course, districts must offer it.

School districts may not be able to provide the mathematics instruction kids need, but — By God! — they must provide instruction in the Bible.

If Warren Chisum were not real, Norman Lear, William Faulkner, the Coen brothers and the screenwriters for “Deliverance” couldn’t dream him up.

Chisum is at least up front about his bigotry against science, math, literature and other faiths:

Because the law requires a school district to offer the Bible as literature course if 15 or more students express interest, what if 15 or more students express interest in the Koran or any other religious text?

“The bill applies to the Bible as a text that has historical and literary value,” Chisum said. “It can’t go off into other religious philosophies because then it would be teaching religion, when the course is meant to teach literature. Koran is a religious philosophy, not of historical or literary value, which is what the Bible is being taught for.”

One marvels at the coincidence that Chisum never had to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) — with history chops like that, it’s unlikely he could pass the test every high school kid must. (There is neither an education nor intelligence requirement to serve in the Texas legislature.)

I was unaware of the mandatory nature happy to hear the mandatory part had been stripped from of Chisum’s Folly. Nothing like a drunken-sailor-spending unfunded mandate from the legislature. Charles Darwin at least supported Sunday school classes with his personal fortune. Warren Chisum doesn’t have such ethics — he’s stealing the money from your property tax contributions to do it, while stealing education from the kids.

We need one of those New Yorker cartoons with some sage carrying a sign, “The End is Near.”

Cynical tip of the old scrub brush to Texas Ed Spectator (the blog formerly known as TexasEd, now in a new home)

11 Comments | Education quality, Literature, Molly Ivins' Ghost, Rampant stupidity, TEKS, Texas, Texas Lege, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Houston Chronicle editorial on evolution and biology classes

January 8, 2008

The Houston Chronicle continues its campaign for good education and high education standards, with another editorial taking a stand for evolution over the frivolity pending before two different education agencies in Texas government.

Publication of a call to arms labs and books by 17 different national organizations of scholars gave the Chronicle a spot to tee off:

A coalition of 17 science groups, among them the National Academy of Sciences, has just issued a call for their members to engage more in the science education process — including explaining evolution.

The coalition warns in this month’s issue of the FASEB Journal (the acronym stands for Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) that today’s muddling of scientific education with unscientific alternatives such as creationism weakens Americans’ grasp of the concepts on which science is based.

Texas creationists should be feeling the heat. Hundreds of Texas Ph.D. biologists have called the agencies to task for considering shorting evolution; Texas newspapers that have spoken out, all favor evolution as good pedagogy because it’s good science. The National Academy of Sciences published its updated call for tough standards and explaining why creationism is soft, and wrong. The experts all agree: No junk science, no voodoo science, so, no creationism in science classes.

Should be feeling the heat. Are they?

Look at the comments on the editorial at the Chronicle’s site.

Also see, or hear:

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Biology, Creationism, Evolution, Higher education, Politics, State school boards, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Stanton Sharp history teaching symposium at SMU, February 9

January 8, 2008

Tired of odd speakers trying to tell you about how boys learn differently from girls because of the size of the Crockus in their brain?

How about serious material to beef up your teaching: Vietnam, the Russian Revolution, Mexicans in U.S. history, Native Americans in the 20th century, use of the internet in history classes — three sessions, each with three classes to choose from.

Poster for session on Russian Revolution, Stanton Sharp Symposium at SMU, 2008

The history department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas offers solid education in serious history issues for teachers in colleges and secondary schools. The Stanton Sharp Teaching Symposium on Saturday, February 9 offers great material in nine different areas. Several of these topics seem to be pulled from the Texas Education Agency’s list of subjects that students need to do better on, for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).

Invitation below the fold. The $15 fee includes lunch; you may earn up to 7 hours of Continuing Education Units (CEU) credits.

(I plan to be there, and if you’re really interested in the Crockus and its scholars, I happen to have a photo of the elusive Crosley Shelvador on my cell phone — he appeared to have used one of those spray-on tanning solutions, but is otherwise real, as the photos show.)

Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | 1914-1918, Africa, America's founding, Ancient history, Cold War, Communism, History, Joseph Stalin, Lesson plans, Lessons of Vietnam, Richard M. Nixon, Russian Revolution, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Vietnam, World history | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Leadership: Why not Bartlett, or Vinick, for president?

January 7, 2008

Often I ponder that there are few, if any, worthy models of bosses in popular media, especially in television. This realization struck me several years ago when a friend and I were working on a book on leadership (never published). Models of action are very powerful things. When people see other people doing things, people copy the behaviors, even unconsciously — ask any parent whose kid suddenly informed the in-laws or PTA of the parent’s ability to cuss in a fashion that would embarrass most sailors.

So, the models of what we see as bosses probably affect what we actually get in the workplace. This should trouble you: There are not a lot of good models of good bosses in any medium.

West Wing, 6th season DVD

In the comic strips, for example, we have Dagwood Bumstead and his boss Mr. Dithers, who wars with his wife, who seems to be an authoritarian despot who physically abuses his workers. Or in more modern strips, we have Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss, who is an incompetent at all human functions, and most management functions as well. Don’t get me going on Beetle Bailey with incompetents all the way up the line from Sgt. Snorkle.

On television we’ve had incompetents and yellers for years. Phil Silvers played Sgt. Bilko. In every incarnation of Lucille Ball’s programs, a boob boss was required — from Ricky Ricardo’s Cuban temper flareups through Gale McGee’s bosses whose manifold, manifest foibles made them great comic foils. Homer Simpson’s ultimate boss, Mr. Burns, anyone?

Generally, even where someone plays a pretty good boss — Crockett’s and Tubbs’ boss on the old Miami Vice, or the lab heads in any of the current CSI series — there is another boss above them who has some massive failing, or a vendetta against the good team.

Exceptions are rare. Some of the Star Treks did better than others. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Next Generation, was ideal as boss in many ways. It was particularly interesting to watch him give his “No. 1,” Riker, first choice in missions on foreign planets. The character Picard had a particular way of showing confidence in subordinates, in subtly demanding the best from them. He’d ask for opinions or ideas on what to do next; when someone came up with a workable idea, or even only the best idea of an apparently unworkable lot, Picard would look them in the eye and delegate to the team the authority to make it happen: “Make it so,” he’d say.

If only we could make it so.

Then there was The West Wing. I think it premiered when I was teaching at night. For whatever reason, I didn’t see a single episode until reruns shortly before the second season. I caught new episodes almost never. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Campaigns, Ethics, History, Leadership, Politics, Presidents, Religion | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Richard Feynman, science vs. public relations

January 7, 2008

Feynman speaking from the grave? You decide:

Feynman uses a glass of ice water to show the Challenger's O-ring problem, 1986

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Richard Feynman, in the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, appendix (1986)

Photo: Richard Feynman, at a hearing of the Rogers Commission, demonstrates with a glass of ice water and a piece of O-ring material, how cold makes the O-rings inflexible; photo credit unknown

    2 Comments | Famous quotes, Physics, Politics, Quotes, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Happy Birthday, Millard Fillmore!

    January 7, 2008

    January 7, 2008, is the 208th anniversary of Millard Fillmore’s birth.

    More obscure facts about our 13th president:

    Promoter of Minnesota’s development: According to a letter in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on January 3, Minnesota owes a debt to Fillmore, for his public relations gimmick on the Mississippi River with a steamboat:

    The Minnesota Territory was promoted as a wonderfully healthy, resource-rich and abundantly diverse landscape by the Grand Excursion of 1854, the riverboat excursion up the Mississippi River made by President Millard Fillmore and scores of journalists from the East. It was a resounding success; in the succeeding years thousands of settlers came to the territory to seek a new life. On May 11, 1858, we became the 32nd state.

    Health care: Two hospitals in the Buffalo, New York, area bear Millard Fillmore’s name, Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital and Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital. A planning process by the state of New York threatens to close the facility at Gates Circle, in a drive to eliminate overlapping services to save money.

    No pets: Millard Fillmore is one of only three presidents to have no pets while in the White House. Franklin Pierce and Chester Alan Arthur are the other two. The no-pets group are mired in obscurity and mediocrity, but I’ll make no post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis.

    Share the mirth: Millard Fillmore shares his birthday with cartoonist Charles Addams, and with newswoman Katie Couric.

    Coincidence? Some think not: Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft both died on March 8, but in different years. Is that too great a coincidence? Heck, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day, in the same year — and that day was July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That is one of the top ten best pieces of evidence of intelligent design in the universe, and still not enough to get intelligent design into biology classes. Random or not, Millard Fillmore’s reputation is neither helped nor hurt by the fact.

    Forgettable lines: Millard Fillmore has nothing quoted in the Yale Book of Quotations.

    How will you commemorate Millard Fillmore today?

    5 Comments | History, Humor, Millard Fillmore | Tagged: , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Randy Forbes, you get an “F” in history — I don’t care if you are a Congressman

    January 6, 2008

    Oy.

    U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Virginia, wants a resolution designating a week in May as “American Religious History Week.”

    Alas, alack, and every other epithet you can think of, Forbes’ resolution, H. Res. 888, is loaded to the gills with historical error. Adding hypocrisy to error, Forbes plagiarized a raft of “citations” in a lengthy set of footnotes in an oleaginous “footnoted” version of the resolution. It’s clear that Forbes did not read the sources of the footnotes, and it appears that he didn’t bother to read the footnotes either. The footnotes claim religious language in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 43 U. S. 127, 198 (1844), for example, but fail to note that the language mentioned was repudiated by the Supreme Court in their upholding of the will of atheist patriot Stephen Girard, turning back arguments that the U.S. is a Christian nation with Christianity in its common law. Forbes is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and a graduate of the University of Virginia’s law school. Hypothetically, he should know better.

    The resolution is so wrong on history, it has the effect of repudiating the No Child Left Behind Act’s call for standards in education, in the worst possible way.

    Chris Rodda, the author and indefatigable correcter of such historical error, has a long post at Daily Kos detailing the problems.

    Baffled at the astounding lack of scholarship in the resolution, I want to know:

    1. Does Rep. Forbes’ mother know he turns in work like this?
    2. What is the view of any serious Virginia history association?
    3. Will any Virginia university history department endorse the resolution as accurate? Would such a paper not violate ethical standards for a student at Randolph-Macon College (Forbes’s alma mater)?
    4. What is the view of the American Historical Association?
    5. What does the Department of Education say about it? Nothing? How about the mavens at the National Assessment of Educational Progress? Is there any way this resolution could fail to damage the history attainment of the entire nation?
    6. Is Forbes bucking to get on Leno’s “Jaywalking” segment, in the playoffs?
    7. Why does Rep. Forbes hate America’s history teachers so?
    8. Wasn’t there any staffer with enough sense to stop Rep. Forbes from embarrassing himself with this stuff?
    9. Has the House historian signed off on the historical accuracy of the resolution’s “whereas” clauses?
    10. Has Rep. Forbes ever looked at the 23 bas relief portrayals of lawmakers around the House Chamber and wondered who they were, why they were there, and why his resolution insults most of them? (He cites the sculptures in one of the whereas clauses — one might wonder if he ever looks up.)

    Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
    Read the rest of this entry »

    10 Comments | Bogus history, History, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Religion, U.S. House of Representatives, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    A neglected anniversary

    January 5, 2008

    Gee, here’s one this blog really should be celebrating: December 28 was the 90th anniversary of the Mencken Fillmore Bathtub Hoax column.

    According to the Associated Press, this the historic highlight for December 28:

    On Dec. 28, 1917, the New York Evening Mail published “A Neglected Anniversary,” a facetious essay by H.L. Mencken supposedly recounting the history of bathtubs in America. (For example, Mencken “claimed” the first American bathtub made its debut in the Cincinnati home of grain dealer Adam Thompson on Dec. 20, 1842, and that the first White House bathtub was installed in 1851 at the order of President Millard Fillmore.)

    We know Mencken was only foolin’.

    3 Comments | H. L. Mencken, History, Hoaxes, Millard Fillmore | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Addictive quizzes on world geography

    January 4, 2008

    Well, this is fairly addictive: The Travel IQ Quiz from TravelPod

    I’d love to have every kid in the class with a computer to take this thing, or pieces of it, to drill on it, and I’d love the ability to add new stuff to it.

    How’d you do? What do you think — are there classroom possibilities here?  (I’ve tried to make the widget work, below . . .)

    This Traveler IQ
    challenge is brought to you by the Web’s Original Travel Blog

    13 Comments | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, On-line education, On-line learning, Technology in the classroom, Travel | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

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