Do your texts even mention the Ardeatine Massacre? On March 24, 1944, just outside of Rome, German troops murdered 335 Italians in a cave, in revenge for an attack on a column of German troops by an Italian resistance group that killed 31 German soldiers.
A Quantum Diaries Survivor wrote last year about the settling of a journalism controversy over the events. I wrote more. This year a blog tightly focused on executions — ExecutedToday.com — marks the actual anniversary.
1 Comment | 
1941-1945, History, History museums, History Revisionism, War crimes, World War II | Tagged: Ardeatine Massacre, History, Italy, War crimes, World War II | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
The ad says “Come visit Utopia in Baltimore.” With an orgy of maps like that planned, it should be a Utopia for somebody: Geographers, cartographers, historians, and anyone interested in travel.
Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum hosts an outstanding exhibit of world-changing maps through June 8, a Festival of Maps; the entire town appears to have gone ga-ga on the idea. Baltimore will be Map Central for a few weeks, at least.
Among the treasures is a huge and beautiful map of the fossil-embedded geological strata that underlie England and Wales. That masterpiece, published in 1815 by a pioneering geologist named William Smith, offered evidence used to support Darwin’s theory of evolution and set the stage for creation-vs.-evolution debates that still rage.
Then there’s the map researched by a doctor named John Snow in the 1850s. It allowed him to trace the source of a cholera outbreak in London to a well used by residents of a single neighborhood.
And there will be charts prepared by geographer Marie Tharp of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a mountainous rise in the mid-Atlantic seabed, based on data gathered by American submarines during World War II and later used to provide evidence of how the Earth’s crust has evolved through geological time.
The Smith and Snow maps anchor key events in science, the origin of paleontology and one of the greatest examples of public health sleuthing. To have both of those maps in one exhibition is a great coup for the Walters, and for Baltimore.
The exhibit also features a map of Utopia drawn by Sir Thomas Moore. Other maps were drawn by Benjamin Franklin, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Leonardo da Vinci.
Here’s a video description of one of the more remarkable pieces on view, a map of London, on a glove:
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.baltimore.org posted with vodpod
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Surely there is material here for the Strange Maps blog. Here’s a still of the glove, from the collection of The National Archives, UK:
Below the fold, a partial list of some of the other exhibits and events planned in and around Baltimore, which will convince you, I hope, that it is indeed an orgy worth getting a ticket to see.
Baltimore remains one of my favorite towns, despite the loss of my Johnny Unitas-led Colts, despite the Orioles’ recent mediocrity; it’s a place of great history, great neighborhoods, and good food. Crabcakes from several sites, dinner at Sabatino’s, maps in the museums. Utopia indeed.
Leave a Comment » | Flag etiquette, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, geology, History, History and art, History museums, Literature, Maps, Travel | Tagged: geography, History, Maps, Media, Museums, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ray Sutera thoughtfully sent a note: The New York Times has a story detailing the expulsion of evolutionary biologist P. Z. Myers from a preview of the creationist movie “Expelled!”
Myers’ account is still funnier.
Why there need to be previews: Myers notes (see the footnote) that the movie appears to again plagiarizes Harvard University’s animation of the operation of a cell, an old creationist trick. If the lawyers get their way, that will be gone by the general release.
Update on the need for previews: See Myers’ note in which he explains that the cell animation in the movie is not Harvard’s exactly, but a copy of Harvard’s version, repeating Harvard’s errors. It’s an attempt to avoid plagiarizing by adding bad grammar, sorta.
1 Comment | Creationism, Humor, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Creationism, Expelled!, Humor | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 20 brought the Spring equinox, but our daffodils have been up for a couple of weeks. Spring comes a little earlier every year.
That fact, and news stories like these below must cause great angst in the bowels of the offices of U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and other places climate change deniers hold sway. One can almost imagine some poor sap of a Coburn minion laboring away long into the night trying to devise legislation that will prevent Canadian thistles, redbuds, marigolds, wheat, soybeans and corn from reading about climate change or going to see Al Gore’s movie, and getting the wrong ideas.
I hope that minion is imaginary.
Here’s story #1: The Tuesday Science Section of the New York Times carried a story by Jim Robbins, “In a Warmer Yellowstone Park, a Shifting Environmental Balance.” Longtime readers probably know of my deep affection and ties to Yellowstone and the Mountain West. So of course this story catches my eye.
Robbins details an interesting set of changes being studied by Robert L. Crabtree, who is “chief scientist with the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center in Bozeman, Montana”: Invasive Canadian thistle, an exotic weed harries cattlemen throughout the world for the ways it destroys pasture land; despite its name, this thistle is an exotic from Asia, accidentally introduced to the Americas. The Lamar Valley in Yellowstone, formerly a wetland, continues to dry as a result of rising temperatures and lack of usual rainfall (a predicted effect of global climate change). Canadian thistle loves drying wetlands, and has invaded along the Lamar River. Officials fought the invasion for several years, but the fight seems lost.
The changes are dramatic, to observant ecologists:
Enter the pocket gopher, a half-pound dynamo that tunnels into the ground near the surface. The gophers love the abundant, starchy roots of the plant and burrow beneath it to harvest the tubers. What they do not eat they stockpile under plants or rocks.
The expansion of pocket gophers and thistle is not gradual, Dr. Crabtree said, but a rapid positive-feedback loop. As the gophers tunnel, they churn surface soil and create a perfect habitat for more thistle. In other words, the rodents help spread the plant. And more plants, in turn, lead to more pocket gophers.
“The pocket gophers are unconsciously farming their own food source,” said Dr. Crabtree. Their numbers here have tripled since the late 1980s, he said.
For their part, grizzly bears have discovered the gophers’ caches and raid them. As a result, the Lamar Valley is pockmarked with holes where grizzlies have clawed up bundles of roots. Bears also devour gophers and their pups.
Dr. Crabtree thinks the bears started feeding in earnest on the new food source in 2004 — a poor year for another bear staple, the white bark pine nut. Now, he adds, they seem to be eating the gophers and roots more routinely.
Tom Oliff, chief scientist for Yellowstone, confirms that the growing season for the park has expanded 20 days a year since the mid-1990s, which may explain the spread of Canada thistle. Mr. Oliff said the park reduced control efforts because evidence showed that the plant ebbed and flowed and that the range would probably shrink on its own.
One doesn’t have to be a fan of the Craigheads or a biologist to be dimly aware that the Yellowstone ecosystems are intensely studied and intensely threatened. Climate change played a contributing role in the cataclysmic fires in the park in 1988; reintroduction of wolves still sparks some controversy, though the return of a top predator has already produced other dramatic changes in Yellowstone ecosystems. Yellowstone is home and refuge to a wild bison herd, and beautiful and unique — generally revered as a “crown jewel” of America’s features.
Nor does one need to be a climate scientist to recognize the signs of warming listed in the article, and the dangers that are implied: Drying wetlands, invasive species, dying traditional foodstocks for grizzlies, population explosions that almost always are a symptom of serious trouble in an ecosystem.
So I was surprised, dumbfounded even, to see The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE claim this as a good story. Why?
Something absolutely unheard-of before: an entire New York Times article talking about Global Warming but… with no hint of impending doom or catastrophes:
In a Warmer Yellowstone Park, a Shifting Environmental Balance by Jim Robbins – published: March 18, 2008
Destruction of wetlands, displacement of native species, upset of the ecological apple cart — and this is “no hint of impending doom?” (While you’re at the NY Times site, also see this story, about how warmer temperatures threaten the grizzly.)
Here’s story #2:
Cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., now appear weeks earlier than they used to. April 5 was the date of the debut of the blossoms 30 years ago, according to a story at National Public Radio, but they are out already and will have peaked by the end of March this year.
Washington’s blossomless Cherry Blossom Festivals (the dates for the festival have not kept pace) provide one more indicator that spring comes earlier. A geographer from Virginia Tech, Kirsten de Beurs, uses remote sensing satellite data to look at the dates plants spring forth, and has determined that spring is moving up 8 hours every year. (Go to the NPR site and listen to the story.) (This science is called “phenology,” the study of the timing of biological phenomena.)
Here’s the problem for climate change deniers: How can they convince the birds, bees, grizzlies, and especially the trees and flowers, that they shouldn’t be acting as if the climate were changing? How can the climate change skeptics get the Canadian thistles to stop invading, the Japanese blossoming cherry trees in the Tidal Basin to delay their blossoms, the bluegrass of Kentucky to delay its greening, the prairies of Kansas to delay the wildflowers and grasses?
Have all those plants been suckered in by Al Gore’s movie? Don’t those plants know that Anthony Watts has shown that the weather measuring stations across the U.S. are placed wrongly, and so there cannot be warmer weather?
Church authorities got Galileo to lie low on the issue of heliocentricity centuries ago; but according to the legend, as he left the room where he had agreed to keep quiet, he muttered, “but still, it moves,” referring to the motion of the Earth about the Sun. This is the problem of the climate change deniers: Still, the climate changes.
Canute couldn’t command the tides not to flow; climate change deniers cannot command the flowers not to bloom. That force that through the green fuse drives the flower? It’s the destroyer of skepticism, too. Climate change skeptics curse it today.
24 Comments | Climate change, Economics, Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Global warming, Natural history, Science | Tagged: Climate change, Economics, geography, Global warming, Politics, Science, Yellowstone Park | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Who was the genius who wrote this? It’s an internet e-mail masterpiece, and it comes without attribution. Do you know who wrote it? Please tell us in comments.
And if you don’t understand it, you’re not a teacher. Pass it to a teacher to explain to you what’s really going on; tip of the old scrub brush to Pam at Grassroots Science; she pointed to this piece in Shibby’s Alaska Journal:
No Child Left Behind – Football Version
The football version of what is going on in education right now. (If you’re not an educator, this may not make a lot of sense to you. But send it to your friends who are in education. They will love it!) For all the educators – In or out of the system.
1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!
3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don’t like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind.
3 Comments | Education, Education reform, No Child Left Behind Act, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Education, Humor, NCLB, Rampant stupidity | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
No kidding. Our Italian physicist friend Dorigo passed along the note on his blog, Quantum Diaries Survivor. George Gliba at NASA (gliba@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov) hopes someone was watching Bootës at about 6:10 UT (which would be about 1:10 a.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT), if I’m calculating that correctly).
Gliba said:
Last night the NASA SWIFT spacecraft saw the most extrinsically luminous Gamma-ray Burst ever known. Some ground based telescopes recorded the visual optical afterglow to be 5th magnitude!
Here’s your chance to make science history: If you may have seen the thing, or better, if you have a videotape of the incident (which may have lasted a few minutes), scientists would sure love to see it.
Here’s what the Swift telescope captured:
The extremely luminous afterglow of GRB 080319B was imaged by Swift’s X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). This was by far the brightest gamma-ray burst afterglow ever seen. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler, et al.
So, did you see it? Call George Gliba; details, Gliba’s note to physicists and astronomers below the fold.
Most gamma ray bursts occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed of light like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches. When the jets plow into surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas, often generating bright afterglows. Gamma ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe since the big bang.
“This burst was a whopper,” said Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It blows away every gamma ray burst we’ve seen so far.”
Calculations show this one was 7 billion light years away. Cool!
1 Comment | Astronomy, Physics, Science | Tagged: Astronomy, Cosmos, Gamma Ray Burst, March 19 event, Physics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
First the producers lied when they interviewed him for the film, claiming to be doing a different movie, a documentary. Then they refused to let him see anything that might reveal what of his own words they were using in the movie.
And now, the producers of Ben Stein’s great turkey of a movie, “Expelled!,” have booted the evolution teacher out of a viewing of the movie of which he is a star they promoted.
[Spew alert! Put the coffee/coke/beer down, and swallow before clicking on the link and reading the story linked to below.]
7 Comments | A Good Story, Creationism, Evolution, Humor, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Creationism, Evolution, Humor, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
With evidence mounting that the politically-motivated rewrite of English standards in Texas schools would harm the education of Spanish-speaking students, the Chairman of the Texas Education Agency told state legislators, English language experts and educators that he will not allow time to analyze the proposed changes to see if they are appropriate, let alone time for changes to the standards.
In short, McLeroy told Texas Hispanics to “drop dead.”
Board chairman Don McLeroy insisted that major changes to the proposed updates are no longer possible. Advocates say the standards need opinions from experts who have researched Hispanic children and understand their learning styles.
“There is no way that ignoring such a sizable chunk of this population from consideration of education policy will do anything but harm the opportunity of a generation,” Herrero said.
McLeroy said there had been plenty of time for experts to weigh in earlier on new curriculum standards. He said he was shocked by accusations that he and others board members are trying to shortchange Hispanic students.
“There’s no malice at all, none, zip, nada. There’s just no time to get another expert in,” McLeroy said. “None of us would do anything to hurt any group of children or any (individual) child. What we want is for them to be successful in the English language because it’s so important.”
In the latest of a string of politically charged bulldozings, McLeroy is pushing standards substituted at the last minute for standards Texas educators had worked on for three years. McLeroy hired a political consulting group to rewrite the standards and substituted the rewrite in a meeting earlier this year (you’ll see my bias when you read the story in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram). Educators, parents, legislators and community leaders criticized the action for disregarding the educational needs of Texas students.
“It’s just ignorance on their part,” said Mary Helen Berlanga, a 26-year board member from Corpus Christi.
The board is set to take a preliminary vote March 27 on the new English language arts and readings standards, which will influence new textbooks for the 2009-10 school year.
A four-member board subcommittee signaled its intent Wednesday to stick with that schedule after state Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, pleaded to let Latino experts review the standards first.
McLeroy is flexing never-tried-before political muscles in a series of changes at TEA. Last year he led the SBOE to arbitrarily reject a math book by a major publisher, daring legal action, hoping he could finally win a case establishing that the board can reject books on political grounds. Biology books are due for a review in the near future, and science and biology standards will be rewritten before that process.
Moving against Hispanic students on the English standards, if successful, would tend to demonstrate that Texas educato needs to dance to the red book writings of Chairman McLeroy. While 47% of Texas public school students are Hispanic, Hispanic voters have generally packed less clout.
McLeroy appears to be counting on Obama and Clinton Democrats to demonstrate apathy again near the general election. If election numbers from the March primary hold up, McLeroy will remain chairman of the SBOE, but the legislature will be likely to shift against many of the actions he’s pushed since assuming the chair, and may turn antagonistically Democratic.
The stakes are higher for Texas students.
Critics of the process asked the subcommittee to allow an expert in Hispanic culture and language to assess the proposed new standards before a preliminary vote next week by the full education board.
The four-member subcommittee that worked on the curriculum did not include anyone of Hispanic descent, or anyone from South or West Texas, and critics said the committee did not seek advice from anyone with expertise in Hispanic language or culture.
Statewide, 47 percent of the more than 4.6 million public school students are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent of El Paso County’s 173,000 students are Hispanic.
According to the Texas Education Agency, about 16 percent of students statewide and about 28 percent of students in El Paso County in 2006 had limited English proficiency.
Resources:
2 Comments | Books, Education, Education assessment, Education quality, Evolution, Literature, Politics, Public education, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection, War on Education | Tagged: Education, English, McLeroy, Politics, SBOE, State testing, TEKS, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
“Bergs and British Climate: That Old Yarn of the Effect of Greenland’s Floating Mountains,” reads a headline from the New York Times, April 26, 1908.
The story wanders about reports of icebergs floating far south of where people might expect them in 1908, what their drift tells us about various currents, and conjectures about hypotheses of climatic effects of the ice and the currents. Some of the icebergs would indeed be monsters, poking more than 400 feet above the waterline; some of the bergs might provoke discussion drifting as far south as Florida.
I mention this article because the archives of the New York Times is open and free for searchers, and many of the articles prior to 1922 are available in .pdf form for free. It took me five or six minutes to get a search that produced fewer than 10,000 stories to pick this one from.
And if I may, it tends to show the difficulties of climate change skeptics who yank a few old articles out of journals of 100 years ago to suggest that, since scientists and navigators wondered about the weather then, climate change is not occurring now. I can imagine there are a lot of stories available in various newspaper archives; if we make a methodological search of them, we may find data that can be turned into real information about climate.
I mention this because Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That? features a couple of articles relying on old weather reports to suggest that concern about warming in the 1920s and 1930s demonstrates that warming isn’t happening now. See this one, too, from a 1922 article, on ice retreating.
In the concluding remarks, the is the recognition of climate change to a warmer regime:
All of these confirm the general statement that we are in the midst of a period of abnormal warmth, which has come on more less gradually for many years.
Of course we all know what happened next, 1934 became the hottest year on record, the dust bowl and great depression occurred, followed by World War II. The climate changes again, a return to a colder phase lasting all the way until about 1978 when the “new ice age” was being discussed. Then the great PDO shift occurred and warming has been the norm since then.
Watts is a former television weatherman now making the big bucks with his own forecasting company. His blog continues among the most popular on WordPress with a regular feature showing photos of U.S. weather service weather stations that are positioned in less-than-optimum places to record cool weather, such as in asphalt parking lots, or near heat exhaust vents from the HVAC systems of nearby buildings. Watts engages in occasionally heated disputes on his blog, and he often highlights the work of some of the more suspect cynics of science like Tim Blair.
Watts has a cadre of faithful followers and defenders; poking at his posts generally produces a swift onslaught of invective from them.
Watts’s blog provides a good resource for counter examples to those offered by policy makers who urge more serious action to control pollution. I’m skeptical of Watts’s skepticism.
For one thing, the charts he shows with these historic articles show a long-term warming trend, which he dismisses. As evidence against global warming, though, these articles’ highlights fall more into the anecdote side than on the data side.
Anecdotal evidence abounds in that article from the New York Times that I note above, too. It’s anecdotal in opposition to Watts’ claims, but it’s still just anecdote.
This is a potentially rich area for local and amateur historians. Meteorologists and other climate scientists are hampered in their analysis by a lack of data, and often by a lack of context of the data they do have. Newspapers now buried in libraries and other archives may offer rich sources of data, and especially context. Mining these sources will be amateur operations, mostly. There is too much ground to cover, too many places to visit, for a major project coordinated out of one institution.
In 1908, stories of massive iceberg mountains were no older than a generation. They are anecdotes, sure — but they may be data points, too. When was the last time anyone sighted an iceberg 400 feet above the water? (The article claims one berg was 700 feet from waterline to peak; when was the last one of those sighted?) When was the last time a significant chunk of ice wandered as far south as Florida? Can you find some of these stories to calculate whether such things still occur, or if not, when they stopped?
My fear is that Watts is mining a rich lode of stories written by newsmen with no institutional memory of ice or other weather phenomena. The institutional memory becomes apparent only in retrospect, only in the archives of the stories, and only compared longitudinally, that is, over time. 20-year periods would probably provide two generations of reporters at a long-established news outlet; reporters in those generations would not be aware of the changes.
The New York Times archives are open. What others?
Historians? High school teachers with students who need projects? What do you have in your town that may shed light? Teachers, pay special attention to the comments on Watts’ blog; many readers write about their historical experiences, such as with the heat waves of the 1930s, and they provide links to news stories and history writings. Even if your town is landlocked, there is weather history to find.
2 Comments | Capturing history, Climate change, Global warming, History, Science, Student projects | Tagged: Climate change, Global warming, History, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Headlines make the news sing: In addition to 100,000 serious-minded, seeking education gawkers dropping by, several other blogs linked to the post on the ancient animation. Far and away the best headline on any of those links: “So who’s whistlin’ now, Steamboat Willie?”
(What? Who is Steamboat Willie? Here, it’s history; you can look it up.)
5 Comments | Humor, Weblogs | Tagged: blogs, Humor, Media | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s a great story about a kid who made a significant dinosaur-related find: 8 year-old Rhys Nichols found the dinosaur tracks as he was strolling along a beach near his home in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
Found the story via Prehistoric CSI, a blog which normally tracks dinosaur digs in Texas at the Seymour, Texas, “red beds” — and which is billed as having a limited run. Texas history and science teachers need to get over there to see what’s up. (Seymour is about midway between Fort Worth and Lubbock.)
Prehistoric CSI has some wonderful stories about digging and researching Texas fossils — see this one featuring 3-D images of a still-rock-encased critter.
I hope that site stays alive for a while.
Leave a Comment » | Natural history, Paleontology, Science, Texas, Travel | Tagged: Dinosaurs, History, Paleontology, Science, Texas, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s just one more report to throw on the pyre of reports to be burned if it ever turns out as skeptics say and others hope, global climate change is just a momentary trend: From 1999 to 2006, the pace of glacier melting worldwide picked up.
We had a cold winter; skeptics will argue that the winter of 2007-2008 was not included, and it reverses the trend.
If only that were so.
9 Comments | Accuracy, Environmental protection, Global warming, Politics, Reason, Science | Tagged: Climate change, environment, Glaciers, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We drove down, saw Lucy, had a great dinner, watched some television and drove back. About eight hours in the car, three hours in the museum with Lucy (click here to see a photo of Lucy as displayed — no amateur photos allowed in the Lucy exhibit).
Well worth it. The entire exhibit is a travelogue about Ethiopia, really — but I got chills looking at real bones. You will, too, I suspect.
The exhibit closes in Houston on April 27. Wouldn’t it be great if the demand were so high that they had to hold it over a few months? If you’re in Houston, you owe it to yourself to see the bones. If you’re near Houston, if you’re within a half-day’s drive, go see. If you’re within a day’s drive, plan some other activity (there are other special exhibits at the Houston Museum of Natural History, on Leonardo DaVinci, on CSI and forensic science, marshes, and cowboys in Texas; there are regular exhibits, including one on gemstones that is better than anything similar at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.) — but go to Houston.
This exhibit was controversial, taking such a treasure out of Africa at all. You owe it to yourself, to your children, to Ethiopia, and to future policy, to see the exhibit if you can.
3 Comments | Africa, Family, Museums, Paleontology, Travel | Tagged: Ethiopia, Family, Houston, Houston Museum of Natural History, Lucy, Museum, Paleontology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Freedom of Conscience Day?
James Madison’s birth day is March 16, Sunday. He was born in 1751, in Conway, King George County, Virginia.
Father of the Constitution, fourth President of the U.S., Great Collaborator, and life-long champion for religious freedom and freedom of speech, press and thought: How should we mark his birthday?
9 Comments | 1787, Bill of Rights, Education, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Freedom - Political, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, History, James Madison, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: Founder, History, James Madison, Politics, Religion | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
On the eve of a major conference on health effects of DDT, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control published a study it had suppressed for several months, detailing pollution effects in the Great Lakes area. The author of the study, demoted but still outspoken, was grudgingly granted permission to attend the Kenaga International Conference on DDT and Health, which opened yesterday at Alma College in Alma, Michigan.
Science won the skirmish, getting the study pried out of CDC. News coverage of the conference stopped short of spectacular so far: Only local Michigan media outlets provided coverage. If we won the war, but no one knew . . . ?
The Morning Sun suggested that further studies of health effects in the area are required, and that no successful cleanup of a toxic site is ever done without health studies showing the need.
[Jane] Keon[, chairwoman of the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force] hasn’t read the entire report but did read the portions about Gratiot County.
“There’s no new information, and everything mentioned is well-known and verified by ATSDR and CDC,” she said. “I understand that in addition to 200 researchers and much peer review the report data was reviewed by state and local health departments in the areas of concern without the complaint that the science was weak.
“We in the task force view the report as further proof that a full-blown health study is needed in Gratiot County. From our own studies we also know that communities with contaminated sites that have a health study to point to get very thorough cleanups, while communities that do not have a health study do not get thorough cleanups.”
The task force has twice applied for grants to perform a comprehensive local heath study but were turned down both times.
“The reasons offered (for rejection) seemed lame and illogical,” Keon said. “One time we were told that we didn’t have enough data, and yet that is why we desired the health study – to have a scientific collection of data.”
A citizens’ group in Washington, D.C., the Center for Public Integrity, obtained a copy of the study last year and made it available on the internet. There is no indication I can find of whether there were changes made in the study between the leaking and the formal publication.
2 Comments | DDT, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Research, Science, War on Science | Tagged: CDC, DDT, Great Lakes, health, pollution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog archives for March, 2008.
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 
