“Bong Recreation Area?” In Wisconsin?
Sign pointing to Bong Recreation Area, in Wisconsin. Named after Maj. Richard Bong, the pilot.
The Walrus covered it pretty well, three years ago. It’s not what you feared, or hoped.
It’s a recreation area made from a closed U.S. Air Force Base. Maj. Richard Bong, a native of Wisconsin, was the top fighter ace for the U.S. in World War II. He is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
1 Comment | 
Congressional Medal of Honor, Geography - Political, Humor, Travel, World War II | Tagged: Bong, Congressional Medal of Honor, geography, Humor, Richard Bong, Road Signs, Travel, World War II | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
We dropped the rental car off at O’Hare, and immediately I noticed the blower in our Toyota Camry wasn’t performing (2002, 128,000 miles, thank you). We tried to live with it, but as the coolness of Wisconsin gave way to 80 degrees in Chicago, we thought we’d better get it fixed.
I’ve been faithful to Verizon Wireless, hoping to boost their stock and hoping that will benefit me as a former employee (but nothing yet). I called their 411 service to find a Toyota dealer in Bloomington, Illinois, so we could get a quick check up on the blower motor, or whatever. I should have been alert when the area code they gave me was 708, but I didn’t catch it. The dealer was on Joliet Road. I called them for directions, and they seemed perplexed, but gave me directions. We steamed to Bloomington. Literally.
Our atlas maps didn’t show Joliet Road in Bloomington. We called for further directions, exit number, and landmarks. When we entered the Bloomington area, we just couldn’t find it.
Did you know you can drive from Texas to Milwaukee and eat at Panera Bread outlets almost the entire distance on I-35? We got lunch at Panera, gassed up the car, and then I had a fascinating conversation with a woman at the BP station, trying to get directions to Joliet Road. She said she’d never heard of it. We checked the maps. No luck. No listing in the index. Then I had the good sense to ask what the area code of Bloomington is – it’s not 708.
Armed with the new information, we found Dennison Toyota in Bloomington (great place – see forthcoming post). Joliet Road is near Chicago. The dealer Verizon Wireless linked us to was miles behind us.
Technology 0, Humans 1.
Kathryn came down with a doozy of the cold while fighting the remnants of Tropical Depression Ike, and when I spoke with her on Tuesday, she sounded nearly dead. I feared sinus infection, but she refused to treat it like that. So I flew up to help her drive back on time.
Wednesday afternoon, I started to get symptoms of a cold. Since my sinus misfortunes while flying with American Airlines in a past life, most of the the time when I get a cold, I get a roaring sinus infection. I call the physician with symptoms, he prescribes antibiotics. Only once in the past ten years have we disagreed.
By Friday morning it was clear my work to keep the cold from becoming an infection had failed (I’ll spare you the specific clinical description). From Wisconsin, I checked with my local Walgreen’s in Texas about picking up a prescription on the road. Then I called the physician. It was 1:00 p.m. before we got all the ducks lined up, and Springfield, Illinois, was the next major city. I had to rely on Verizon Wireless again, but they at least got me to a Walgreen’s.
Walgreen’s’* people were most helpful. I took the first available listing. That store referred me to one just off the freeway. Alas, my prescription had not yet shown up on the computer. We had almost two hours to Springfield . . .
I confirmed the physician had phoned in the prescrip. Then I checked with my local drugstore. It didn’t show on their system. We passed Springfield, Illinois, and focused on St. Louis. Again, Walgreen’s’ people came through. But the prescrip still didn’t show on the national computerized system.
One more check with the local, Texas pharmacy, and the technician let slip the problem: While prescriptions are phoned in all day, the pharmacist doesn’t take them off the answering machine until the shift ends at 5:00 p.m. Nothing would happen, technologically, until the humans intervened.
Walgreen’s found an outlet on the south and west side of St. Louis that would allow time for the prescription to show up in the system, and it was right off the freeway. We got the prescription. I’m on the mend.
Technology 1, Humans 2 more.
Final Score: Technology 1, Humans 3.
3 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Customer Care, Technology, Travel | Tagged: Business, Customer Service, Technology, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We may have crossed paths with P. Z. Myers — but he didn’t recognize the rented Saturn I was driving in Wisconsin, I’m sure.
He only drove across two states. I flew to Chicago, drove to Appleton, Wisconsin, and then drove back to Dallas, Texas. We didn’t take nearly the number of photos we should have, but there are some observations on technology and the open road to come.
In the meantime, readers were generally polite — but as always, not enough of you left comments.
Comments are open. Always. Take advantage.
Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Family, Personal, Weblogs | Tagged: Administrivia, blogs, Personal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A bit unexpectedly, I’m in the wilds of Wisconsin at the moment and on the road the next couple of days. Posting is likely to be sparse.
But the American open road is, as always, very interesting.
For example, according to the billboards, somewhere in Wisconsin there is a restaurant named Brisco’s (after Brisco County, Texas?), which claims to feature cuisine (a French word) of a “southwestern” flavor. What does that mean?
Their billboard features a Wyoming-style cowboy, a saguaro cactus (from 800 miles south of Wyoming) in front of Delicate Arch, the signature arch of Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah, (well out of cattle company and still at least 400 miles from saguaro country). Only on a billboard in Wisconsin . . .
3 Comments | Administrivia, Botany, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Natural history, Travel, Weblogs | Tagged: Adventure, blogging, geography, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Hewlett-Packard announced plans to cut thousands of jobs from tech consulting giant EDS, in Plano, Texas.
About 25,000 people will lose jobs in the next 36 months under plans from HP.
Leave a Comment » | Economics, Technology, Texas | Tagged: Economics, Employment, Recession, Technology, Unemployment | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Are you ready for it, teachers?
2008: I wasn’t ready to blog about it today. Texas requires one day of instruction on the Constitution in every social studies class. In government today, it happened to fit. We discussed the Constitution earlier in world history, and we will return to it at various points through the year.
3 Comments | 1787, 1789, Bill of Rights, Freedom - Political, Government, History, Law, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 1787, 1789, Constitution Day, Government, History, Law, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Al Gore bravely fought to save ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and for his efforts got a campaign to turn his good work into a joke by Karl Rove and Bush campaign, in 2000.
John McCain’s tech guy claims McCain had role in inventing the Blackberry.
Obama laughed it off.
There’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans. Have you noticed?
Leave a Comment » | McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics, Technology | Tagged: McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Some do, some teach, some teach and do.
Kudos to Coach Russ Henrie in Delta, Utah (one of my mother’s home towns), for knowing CPR, and delivering it at a crucial time.
Leave a Comment » | Health care, Heroes, Life, Teaching | Tagged: CPR, Defibrillator, Heroes, Life, Teachers, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
John Stossel’s new book makes a detour to rail against the regulation of DDT and against Rachel Carson and her book, Silent Spring.
I’ve not read the book, but from what I’ve read about it, he’s got it dead wrong. If the example offered by Grokmedia is their own, and not Stossel’s, shame on them. (Stossel’s complained about DDT before, though, and gotten the facts as wrong as Grokmedia has them.) The claims are unbelievable:
Consider the chemical DDT. I’m sure, if you’ve heard anything at all about DDT, it’s that it’s a horrible, deadly chemical, that must be banned to preserve the public’s safety. The truth is, the only thing DDT affects are mosquitos. Not humans. In fact, I’m old enough to remember trucks pulling through our neighborhood and spraying the stuff into the air, like gigantic clouds, bringing death – to the mosquito population. These clouds of DDT harmed no one. There were no great increases in any kind of cancer or other fatal diseases – and certainly none that could be associated with DDT. Enter the book, Silent Spring.
A woman by the name of Rachel Carson wrote a book that vilified DDT, and blamed our love of chemical solutions for her own cancer. (She died of breast cancer two years after the publication of her book.) Silent Spring is almost single-handedly credited with triggering a worldwide ban on DDT. The result of this ban has been, paradoxically enough, millions of deaths in countries like Ethiopia, where malaria kills due to mosquito infestations. U.S. aid policy bans sending money to any country that chooses to spray with DDT.
How did Silent Spring cause this wave of destruction? Marketing. The book was marketed by it’s publishers. The marketing efforts attracted the attention of a mainstream media hungry for stories that scare the populace to death. The unwashed masses Demanded That Something Be Done. Politicians, eager to grandstand (and free of conciences that might give them pause to think about the Law of Unintended Consequences) passed laws, and that was that.
Here’s what I wrote in comments to the post at Grokmedia, which appears to have gone into their own hell for any post that disagrees with their views:
Stossel said that about DDT? Once again, he’s gone off the rails.
Do you seriously think that a book publisher with its meager PR budget could derail a multi-billion-dollar pesticide manufacturing industry that was led by several of America’s top 100 corporations? Do you think corporations are really that incompetent at the public relations game?
The truth is that DDT was banned because of its harm to the environment, not due to its dangers to human health (though, to be perfectly accurate we should note that every cancer-fighting agency on Earth says DDT is a probably human carcinogen, and recent research has strengthened the links between cancer in people exposed to DDT in their mother’s breast milk and in utero, and that DDT is now known to be a rather nasty endocrine disruptor in all animals). More than a thousand studies confirmed the dangers of DDT to birds and other predators higher up in food chains, especially in estuarine waters.
No one passed a law banning DDT. If the action was popular, that was beside the point. In 1962, in response to the half-million-dollar slander campaign against Carson by the pesticide manufacturers (don’t take my word for it — look it up), President Kennedy asked his Science Advisory Council to scrutinize the book. In May 1963 they reported back that Carson was correct on all counts but one — they said Carson went too easy on the dangers of DDT, and that action needed to be taken right away to stop its use. Kennedy dallied, however, and did little before he died.
The “ban” on DDT came nearly a decade later, in 1972. It was not due to any “junk science” law (an interesting claim since it is based on junk science itself). Two federal courts had ordered EPA to speed up its analysis of the registration of the pesticide, in lieu of simply ordering the stuff off the market after two entirely different lawsuits. Pesticide manufacturers had been defendants in both lawsuits, and they put up a more than vigorous fight — but they lost on the science.
EPA dragged its feet, but finally acted against DDT in 1972, effectively banning the broadcast spraying of DDT on crops, but leaving it available for things like malaria control. Of course the ruling was challenged in court, since under U.S. law, had the ruling been only popular, and not based on considerable evidence, the courts would have been obligated to nullify the ruling. In two separate challenges, the courts ruled that EPA’s action was solidly based on the scientific evidence, and therefore would stand.
That’s quite a bit different from the picture Stossel paints, I gather. Is this, perhaps, his first foray into fiction?
And, did you catch the contradictions? The author claims mosquito abatement in Ethiopia is hampered by a lack of U.S. aid, as a result of Rachel Carson’s book in 1962. Do they know that George Bush is president? Do they really think Bush and Cheney are tools of Rachel Carson? Do they know that bed nets have cut malaria rates by half where they were used in Ethiopia?
Looks like another example of DDT poisoning to me.
4 Comments | Africa, DDT, Junk science, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Ethiopia, Junk science, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A smaller, less-highly regarded force of Athenians faced a larger, better trained, more experienced army of Persians. Sparta’s promised reinforcements had not yet arrived.
And yet the Greeks triumphed over the Persians at Marathon. How?
Two Greek generals followed the dictates of Santayana, whose ghost couldn’t exist because his corporeal existence was nearly 2,500 years in the future — they studied history, and they made plans to avoid the errors others had made in the past.
The two Athenian commanders, Callimachus and Miltiades (the latter having fought in the Persian army himself), used their knowledge of Persian battle tactics to turn the tide further in their favor. As the clatter of spears, swords and shields echoed through the valley, the Greeks had ensured that their best hoplites (heavily armed infantry) were on the flanks and that their ranks were thinned in the center. Persian battle doctrine dictated that their best troops, true Persians, fought in the center, while conscripts, pressed into service from tribute states, fought on the flanks. The Persian elite forces surged into the center of the fray, easily gaining the ascendancy. But this time it was a fatal mistake. The Persian conscripts whom the Hellenic hoplites faced on the flanks quickly broke into flight. The Greeks then made another crucial decision: Instead of pursuing their fleeing foes, they turned inward to aid their countrymen fighting in the center of the battle.
By then, the Persians were in a state of utter confusion. Their tactics had failed, their cavalry was absent and their archers were useless. Their more heavily armed and armored opponents, who could sense that victory was close, were attacking them from three sides and pushing them into the sea. The Persians fled back to their ships. Many of the Athenians, buoyed by their success, dragged several of the Persian vessels to shore, slaughtering those on board.
When the day was over, the Greeks had won one of history’s most famous victories, claiming to have killed about 6,400 Persians for the loss of only 192 Athenians. The Spartans eventually arrived, but only after the battle was long over. To assuage their disbelief in the Athenians’ victory, they toured the battlefield. To their amazement, they found the claim of victory was indeed true. The Athenians had defeated the most powerful empire in the Western world.
It was a great victory. The Athenians had been so certain of defeat, however, that they had made plans to burn Athens and have Athenians left behind commit suicide rather than be captured by the Persians. In order to prevent the plans from going through, they needed one more tremendous piece of history, and they called on their runner:
With time of the essence, the Athenians dispatched Pheidippides to inform Athens’ populace of their victory before the troops arrived. The tale goes that after running the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens, Pheidippides exclaimed: “Rejoice! We conquer!” then died from exhaustion. Whether true or not, that is the source of the modern-day marathon race; the distance of the modern race reflects the distance Pheidippides ran.
I opened world history this year asking how many had seen the movie “300.” It produced some excitement, which I was glad to see. Not enough students knew that it was based on a real battle. We recounted the story of the victories at Thermopylae and Salamis, and then told the story of the set up for that war, the Greek victory at Marathon. It was just after the Olympics closed — tying the battles to the last event of the Olympics, in honor of Pheidippides, made for a great class, for me. For the students? I hope so.
One of my intended learning points was that history is about the stories, not about memorizing dates and places. Stories, they like. Dates and places, not so much.
Another point: History is all around us, even when we play couch potato and just watch the Olympics.
I knew I’d scored when a student asked me after class whether I knew when this year’s marathon would be rebroadcast, so she could watch it.
2 Comments | A Good Story, Education, Famous Battles, Greece, Heroes, History, Leadership, Lessons of history, Teaching, Travel, World history | Tagged: Anniversaries, Athens, courage, Education, Famous Battles, History, Marathon, September 17, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
My children lived to see a Boston Red Sox win in the World Series, already in their short lives.
100-year old Cubs fan Richard Savage, who saw the Cubs lose the World Series to the Boston Red Sox in 1918, hopes to see the Cubs win a World Series - AARP Bulletin Today
More history is being written: Could this be the Chicago Cubs’ year? Their magic number is 4, after the Cubbies defeated the Brewers, 5-4, behind Kerry Woods’ ninth-inning heroics.
With the triumph, the Cubs pushed Milwaukee nine games back in the National League Central race and a half-game behind the New York Mets in the wild-card playoff race while reducing their own magic number to four.
“We just figure if we keep winning ballgames, good things will come for us,” Dempster said. “Don’t get caught up in the standings or numbers or anything like that. Just come to the ballpark and try to win every day. This is big.”
The Cubs last won the World Series in 1908.
More good news: Changes in the balloting procedures for the Baseball Hall of Fame improve the chances of previously-overlooked heroes like Ron Santo.
Now, about that Triple Crown . . . or even that one.
1 Comment | Baseball, History, Life, milestones, Personal | Tagged: Baseball, Baseball Hall of Fame, Chicago Cubs, Entertainment, History, Sports, Triple Crown | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
High school students weren’t alive when Yellowstone burned in 1988. Do you remember?
NASA infrared satellite photograph of Yellowstone fires in 1988
It was a conflagration that made hell look like good picnicking. 1988 was a particularly dry summer, and hot. Lightning and human carelessness ignited fires across western North America. Five huge fires raged out of control, and burned huge swaths out of forests in Yellowstone National Park that probably hadn’t seen fire in 80 years, maybe longer.
The Salt Lake Tribune featured several stories about the fires and Yellowstone’s recovery today, “Yellowstone: Back from the ashes,” how wildland firefighting changed, a great chart on fire succession stages, and another chart on the effects of the fire on larger animals in the Yellowstone system.
Old Faithfull erupts against background of smoke from 1988 fires - NPS photo by Deanna Marie Dulen
The 1988 fires made history in several ways; it was the first time so many fires had burned simultaneously. Ultimately some of the fires merged into even greater conflagrations. The fires forced the shutdown of tourism and other activities in the Park. Inadequacies in fire fighting equipment, staffing and policies were highlighted and displayed in newspapers and on television for weeks, forcing changes in policies by cities, states and the federal government.
Some good came out of the fires. Much undergrowth and dead wood had choked off plant diversity in some places in the Park. The fires opened new meadows and offered opportunities for some species to expand their ranges.
Scientifically, a lot of information came out of the fires. The mystery of when aspen would seed out was solved — new aspen seedlings appeared in areas where the fires had sterilized the ground with extremely high temperatures that seemed to trigger the seeds to germinate.
Our visits in 1989 offered a lot of opportunities to look at very bleak landscapes.
Yellowstone National Park in 1989, a year after the big fires - Copyright 1989 and 2008, Ed Darrell
Recover of the forested areas began rather quickly, but will take time to cover over all the scars of the fires.
Other resources:
3 Comments | Biology, Botany, Disasters, History, Natural history, Natural resources, Science | Tagged: Botany, Disasters, Fire Fighting, Forest Fires, History, Montana, National Park System, Natural Disasters, Science, Travel, Wyoming, Yellowstone Park | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It takes guts, but some Alaskans are protesting their governor’s campaign. They plan to use their First Amendment Rights while they can.
Description here, at the venerable Mudflats blog. Is it true that this protest against Palin was the largest political rally in Alaska, ever?
Photos of some truly original protest signs here, at Mamadance.
1 Comment | Campaigns, Elections, First Amendment, History, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: Campaign, Elections, First Amendment, McCain 2008, Politics, Presidents, Sarah Palin | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s amazing what is not available on video for use in the classroom.
Texas kids have to study the “Grito de Dolores” in the 7th grade – the “Cry from Dolores” in one translation, or the “Cry of Pain” in another (puns in Spanish! Do kids get it?). Father Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo made the speech on September 16, 1810, upon the news that Spanish authorities had learned of his conspiracy to revolt for independence. The revolution had been planned for December 8, but Hidalgo decided it had to start early.
This date is celebrated in Mexico as Independence Day. Traditionally the President of Mexico issues an update on the Grito, after the original bell that Father Hidalgo used is rung, near midnight.
Hidalgo himself was captured by the Spanish in 1811, and executed.
It’s a great story. It’s a good speech, what little we have of it (Hidalgo used no text, and we work from remembered versions).
Why isn’t there a good 10- to 15-minute video on the thing for classroom use? Get a good actor to do the speech, it could be a hit. Where is the video when we need it?
Statue of Father Hidalgo in Dolores, Mexico.
Update for 2008: Glimmerings of hope on the video front: Amateur videos on YouTube provide some of the sense of what goes on in modern celebrations.
And, see this re-enactment from Monterrey:
4 Comments | Education, Famous quotes, Freedom - Political, Government, History, History audio sources, History images, Mexican War, Mexico, Politics, Texas, Texas history, Travel, Video and film | Tagged: Education, Father Hidalgo, freedom, Grito, History, Independence Day, Mexico, Politics, Texas, Texas history, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Elektratig has found a legal scholar with a wild bent who has penned a couple of scholarly articles designed to give heart to conspiracy nuts, anarchists and radical libertarians.
One article [by Michael Stokes Paulsen], “Let’s Mess With Texas,” actually was published in the Texas Law Review in 2004, arguing the case that the odd treaty negotiations/statehood legislation that led to Texas becoming part of the U.S. in 1845 included a clause that would allow Texas to split itself into as many as five states. The authors speculate as to chaos this would cause in U.S. politics. The article is available in a free download from SSRN.
The other, “Is West Virginia Unconstitutional” was published in the California Law Review. It offers a good history of the creation of West Virginia from the northwestern territory of Virginia in 1863, when the pro-Union counties of the northwest part of the state declared a government in exile and consented to the Union’s partition of Virginia.
Both stories pose interesting questions for government classes, U.S. history classes (especially with regard to the Civil War), and possibly for Texas history classes, though the discussions may not seem germane to the 7th grade minds it would need to entertain.
Both articles breezily discuss history in a wry, humorous way. A lot more history for high school students should be written this way.
I can’t find it at the moment, but it seems to me that most authorities determined Texas’s right to self-partition expired when the state tried to secede in 1861, and, in any case, did not survive the readmission process subsequent to the end of the war and reconstruction. Although Texas U.S. Rep. John Nance Garner (future vice president under FDR) threatened to exercise the clause in 1930 to fight a tariff he didn’t like, it’s unlikely Texans would consent to lose their bragging rights to being bigger than anybody else in the Lower 48. The issue is generally considered dead to Texans, if not in law.
Plus, there isn’t enough hair in the Lone Star State for four more Rick Perrys.
If you think history can’t be fun, you haven’t read this stuff. Go check it out.
Resources:
12 Comments | 1836, 1861-1865, Civil War, Education, History, Mexican War, Politics, Texas, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 1836, 1845, 1861-1865, Civil War, History, Politics, Redistricting, Texas, West Virginia | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
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