Good works are oft’ interred with the bones of the good workers, according to that Brutus Mark Antony guy — and at Watts Up With That, many work to bury any good workers, too.
Among these, Affordable Medicines for Malaria (AMFM), is one of the cleverest, and may even work. The idea is that AMFM will buy ACT (artemisinin combination therapy – something else the Wattoids didn’t know about) drugs directly from the manufacturers in huge amounts at deep discount, and pass the drugs on to the distributors, public health agencies, private wholesale pharmacies, and NGOs at so far below cost that even counterfeit drugs cost more. The private wholesalers can take their profit.
One may hope someone will find the magic bullet to fight malaria. There’s the Ghost of Santayana pacing the chalkboard again, however: Our experience shows that magic is not real, no magic bullet has ever existed against malaria, and DDT is not now the magic bullet it never was in the first place. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Ghost of Santayana mutters.
A special place in hell is reserved for those who remember the past, but tell false tales about it instead.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Did I mention that San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world?
A lot of reasons. My father had businesses there (1930s?). My parents wooed in and around there. Our Favorite Aunt Linda did well in the area (Marin County, but that just adds to the beauty).
I was accepted at Hastings College of Law. We figured we had enough saved that we could either pay tuition at Hastings, and live on what Kathryn could earn, if she could get a job; or we could buy a house in the D.C. area, keep our jobs on Senate staff, and pay tuition.
We had a wonderful week in San Francisco getting no job interviews. On our last night we found a Tower Record Store and stocked up (back in the days of vinyl) for the next four years at George Washington, and sadly left the city. In a fit of irony, Tower Records opened a store across the street from GW’s law school two years later.
Earlier, after the 1976 elections, I hid out at Aunt Linda’s joint, Red Robin Catering, tending bar, washing dishes, washing a lot of lettuce, and generally trying to make a car payment and enjoy San Francisco. She catered the opening of the Marin/San Francisco ferry, which meant more than a dozen trips overall, as I recall, serving champagne mostly. Now I look back on how unfair it was that my youth did not include electronic cameras.
Early mornings — and there were more than a few — the city is just unsurpassed in beauty. Cousin Steve pushed me out of bed to go see the Muir Woods at near dawn (I confess I did not go often enough). Some nights I’d just cruise across the Golden Gate Bridge for the views.
Like this one, a composition from several shots from the same place, woven together with the wonders of electronic camera software:
Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, and fog, from Marin County - Wikimedia image, panorama photo stitching by Mila Zinkova
It’s shot from Marin County, west of the Golden Gate Bridge, I think — that’s the North Tower of the bridge, with the Bay Bridge and the city of San Francisco in the background.
Discussion at Wikimedia: Those are crepuscular rays coming through the trees. There’s an SAT vocabulary word for you: Crepuscular.
More crepuscular rays from Marin County, Wikimedia photo by Mila Zinkova
More:
More great shots of San Francisco at Heida Biddle’s Tales of 7, here, and especially here
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Librarians have it good, living among books. Librarians at the Library of Congress have it best, with the amazingly complete collection of books, top-notch scholars, and just plain old curious stuff lying around.
Like copies of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Garry Wills argues that Lincoln rethought and recast America’s image in that speech, in less than two minutes — though it took a century before the recasting was complete.
The Library of Congress just has the history, and notes the power of the speech overall.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) Africa Indoor Residual Spraying (AIRS) Project found this warehouse with 119 tons of leftover, surplus and expired DDT in Ethiopia. In total, PMI AIRS Progect found 930 tons of unused DDT in Ethiopia, in 1,600 tons of expired pesticides total. Other nations have other surplus DDT stocks. Africa never suffered a shortage of DDT.
Watch the video, and you can see God trying to stop her from talking, putting that frog in her throat.
I only respond to the first six minutes or so — you get the idea. McIlhinney leaves no falsehood untold, no crazy charge not leveled at Rachel Carson and “environmentalists.”
Here’s the film clip of McIlhinney misleading the masses:
Here is my quick and dirty response:
1. Environmentalists are not calling for a ban on coal, oil or gas. Fear talk. Why would anyone tell such a whopping lie? How do we know the film lies? Who is this “environmentalist” they fear to name?
2. Rachel Carson was right — DDT kills ecosystems. Carson said we needed to restrict the use of DDT in order to keep it viable as a pesticide. But few listened (not McIlhinney, that’s for sure). Consequently, DDT became ineffective against mosquitoes that carry malaria, scuttling the World Health Organization’s ambitious campaign to eradicate malaria. Had that not happened, and had we eradicated malaria by 1975 as planned, millions of lives could have been saved. McIlhinney is the one with blood on her hands.
3. DDT has never been banned worldwide, was never banned in Africa, and is still used in those places it still works, under a special treaty signed in 2001. McIlhinney hopes you won’t know about that treaty, and fails to mention it herself. What’s she trying to hide?
4. Carson did not say DDT was the sole culprit for the decline of birds — but by 1962, it was the sole culprit preventing their recovery. Bald eagles and brown pelicans have come off the endangered species list, populations recovering in almost lock-step with the decline of DDT in the birds’ flesh — proof that Carson was right.
5. Under U.S. law, no agency could ban a useful pesticide without mountains of evidence that the pesticide was dangerous. Four separate court proceedings looked at DDT, two before the EPA acted, and two appeals after EPA banned DDT use on crops. All four courts found DDT to be dangerous and uncontrollable in the wild. The two appeals of EPA’s labeling change were both decided on summary judgment — the science was so powerfully on Carson’s side. In May 1963 the President’s Science Advisory Council reported on their fact checking of Carson’s book — they said Carson was dead right in everything but one: Carson was too easy on DDT. That panel, with its significant population of Nobel winners, called for quick action against DDT. Why doesn’t McIlhinney give the facts here?
6. The claim that EPA’s ban influenced WHO is pure bullfeathers. WHO had to end its malaria eradication campaign, using DDT, in 1965 — the mosquitoes were immune to the stuff. EPA didn’t act until seven years later, and EPA’s jurisdiction extends only to the borders of the U.S. In fact, EPA’s “ban” left DDT to be manufactured in the U.S. for export to Africa. Can’t McIlhinney read a calendar? The “ban” in 1972 did not travel back through time to stop WHO from using DDT. (For that matter, WHO never completely stopped DDT — wherever it could work, they used it, and still do.)
7. DDT has always been available for any government in Africa to use. What that guy in the film is really saying is racist: He’s claiming Africans were too stupid to use DDT, though it was cheap and available, and though it would save their lives. Don’t listen to him. Africans are not stupid: They’d use DDT were it effective and safe. Shame on McIlhinney for entertaining such a claim.
8. Malaria did not skyrocket after DDT was banned in the U.S. Mosquitoes don’t migrate that far. There was an uptick in malaria 20 years later, when the pharmaceuticals that cure malaria in humans, ceased to be effective.
But today, malaria rates are the lowest they’ve been in recorded history, and malaria death rates are the lowest they’ve been in human history. When the U.S. banned DDT spraying on cotton in 1972, about 2 million people a year died from malaria. Today, the death toll is under 900,000. Don’t be frightened or stampeded by erroneous, large figures.
In the end, we can’t poison Africa to health, and if we could, it would be immoral to do that instead of building health care to fight diseases.
Children die because hard-hearted politicos like Ann McIlhinney frustrate the work of malaria fighters, and mislead policy makers away from solutions that would save children’s lives.
Shame on her.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Great story about a Texas poet, Austin Kleon — and wouldn’t this be an interesting project for poetry study? The method is called “newspaper blackout” in the story; a new genre of poetry?
I am reminded of the story of the sculptor who, when asked how he made such wonderful statues, said he merely chipped away from the stone everything that wasn’t the sculpture he wanted. Who was that?
PBS Newshour provides the best coverage of literature and poetry of any major television news operation, another good reason to keep PBS well-funded.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Bill White is rising in the polls, and, according to some watchers, has a good chance to unseat Texas Gov. Rick Perry, seeking an unprecedented fourth term in office (he succeeded George W. Bush when Bush won the presidency).
Perry is scared, as illustrated by his chickening out of debates (he said that he wouldn’t debate White unless white released tax returns dating back nearly two decades, more than Perry has by a long stretch; plus, the period covered includes White’s service in the federal government, which required an annual report of financial information more detailed than tax returns).
White’s been combing Perry’s record to document where he and Perry differ — and in the doing, White’s team discovered that the official records from the governor’s office show he puts in fewer than ten hours of work a week.
If just half the Texans who put in more work hours than Rick Perry were to vote for White, White would win in a landlside.
At a minimum, it makes for an interesting political ad.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
DDT doesn’t work against bedbugs, and hasn’t worked against them since the late 1950s.
Astroturf organizations, so-called “think-tanks” set up by corporate interests jumped on bedbugs as another way of attacking the 46-years dead Rachel Carson, environmentalists, scientists and government — falsely. The Heartland Institute is singled out as one group spreading false claims in favor of poison and against environmental protection.
The recent resurgence of bedbugs is more related to changes in fighting other pests than in the discontinuation of DDT against them. Had DDT been the magic answer, bedbugs should have made a resurgence in 1960 when DDT use against them was stopped, not 2010, a full half-century later.
The many screeds in favor of DDT are politically driven, not science driven.
Think about that — every claim that we need DDT to fight bedbugs is a planted, political advertisement, and not a fact-based policy argument. Each of those claims is based in a political smear, and not based on science.
The really weird part is that so many writers and bloggers spread the false claims without being paid. Selling one’s soul for money is understandable; giving one’s soul away for nothing is stupid, or evil, or both.
Newsweek reported:
DDT “devastated” bedbug populations when it was introduced in the 1940s, says Richard Cooper, technical director for Cooper Pest Solutions and a widely quoted authority on bedbug control. Mattresses were soaked in it, wallpaper came pre-treated with it. It also killed boll weevils, which fed on cotton buds and flowers (by far, the majority of DDT was applied to cotton fields), and, incidentally, it killed bald eagles and numerous other species of birds, the phenomenon that gave Carson her title. In the laboratory, DDT can cause cancer in animals; its effect on human beings has long been debated, but since it accumulates up the food chain, and stays in the body for years, the consensus among public-health experts was that it was better to act before effects showed up in the population. But long before the United States banned most uses of it in 1972, DDT had lost its effectiveness against bedbugs—which, like many fast-breeding insects, are extremely adept at evolving resistance to pesticides. “Bloggers talk about bringing back DDT,” says Bob Rosenberg, director of government affairs for the National Pest Management Association, “but we had stopped using it even before 1972.”
The Texas Board of Education announced Monday that it will order new Bibles for Texas schools that remove all references to Jesus on the grounds that his teachings are “too liberal” for the classroom. The changes will likely impact Bibles sold throughout the U.S. because Texas buys more Bibles than any other state.
The board approved the changes in a 10 to 5 party-line vote with unanimous support from Republicans. Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist and leader of the board’s conservative faction, said the changes were approved without any input from theologians, in keeping with the board’s practice of editing schoolbooks on its own and ignoring experts.
“I know there’s folks who will say we in Texas have no business teaching religion in the classroom, well frankly a bunch of ignorant zealots like us have no business meddling with textbooks either but that’s didn’t stop us from doing so,” McLeroy said. “Here in the republic of Texas we don’t give a lick what the rest of the country thinks, unless of course we need federal money or help with stuff like hurricanes.”
Quotes from Don McLeroy are a little creepy, no? You know it’s parody — isn’t it? — and yet the quotes and tone just ring so . . . true.
It’s a parody, right? Isn’t it? This can’t be accurate, right?
The project, an online effort to create a Bible suitable for contemporary conservative sensibilities, claims Jesus’ quote is a disputed addition abetted by liberal biblical scholars, even if it appears in some form in almost every translation of the Bible.
The project’s authors argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes.
“Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it’s professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible,” said Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, the project’s online home.
Wait. That’s got to be a parody, right? No?
That’s not parody? “Andy Schlafly” really exists, and despite his appearing to be so stupid as to have to be reminded to breathe, he’s complaining about Jesus’s liberal views?
Gods forgive them For Christ’s sake, God, stop them now, for they know nothing. They know NOTHING.
You can be sure that, were Glenn Beck still alive today, he’d be out there to complain about people like Schlafly “rewriting the words of the founders.”
Tip of the old scrub brush to Kathryn, whose friend observed of Andy Schlafly, “This just goes to show you that the shit doesn’t fall very far from the bat.” The line has already been copyrighted, but feel free to use it in pursuit of enlightenment, education, and human rights.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Turley’s motion for dismissal goes to the heart of what kinds of conduct may be impeachable, and when the jurisdiction of the impeachment clauses apply — maybe subtle, maybe somewhat obscure, but still delicious constitutional issues. I can imagine a government class reading the motion as a group and discussing it, in a more perfect world.
Is your government class watching this trial at all?
Continuing comedy/tragedy at Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts’ staunchly anti-global-warming-science blog.
Funny in the denial of the obvious, funny in the dance to get around the science, tragic in that anyone grants much credence to the denials of the obvious and science — Watts steams on.
Watts and his moderators haven’t completely blocked my comments, and I can sneak one in on occasion just slipping under their radar. We are all plagued by a recent spate of pro-DDT publicity, prompted by what I am not sure but encompassing a full-court press from anti-science moguls like Paul Driessen, pro-poison advocates, and a film by a crank (quack?) physician-to-the-stars who appears fearful of revealing his full name, Rutledge Taylor and “3 Billion and Counting.” (Taylor’s film is sort of the “Expelled!” of the Chronically Obsessed with Rachel Carson (COWRC) set, but without the charm and science of Ben Stein’s film, since the scientists refused to sit for an interview with Taylor.) (Taylor’s publicity refers to him as “Dr. Rutledge.” Perhaps he aspires to the heights of academic and science credence granted Dr. Phil.)
Dancing on the edge of science is treacherous, as Watts and Goklany may have discovered. Goklany claims I make many errors in my comments, but he cites no evidence suggesting I err at all. I merely pointed to the decline in death totals from malaria, and to the real work of the Gates Foundation. Nothing in those comments has been tagged as incorrect.
In comments, however, truth breaks out. Franklin’s adage about truth winning in a fair fight holds true, especially on a topic like malaria and DDT, where Watts and Goklany together, even were they the acme of broadcast meteorology and dissident engineering, can’t snuff out factual comments fast enough to keep up the tirade. [You fellows there on the side: Stop your betting about whether Goklany is a creationist! Gambling is not allowed here, especially when the fix is in. He confesses he is “an engineer,” after all.]
Sometime, perhaps this week, I hope to get a substantial comment about the flurry of crank science on DDT, and Rutledge Taylor’s contemptible falsehoods. But I am without time, and without computer most of the day.
Kathryn swears by the watermelon and onion salad, crisp, sweet watermelon and sweet onions with greens and a great dressing.
For dessert I took the blueberry bock pie. The one slice must have contained (barely) a pint of fresh blueberries. The crust complemented the blueberries perfectly, crisp and exploding at the fork. The bock? It’s made with bock beer, Shiner Bock. I suspect chef Brian Olenjack reduces sugar considerably to add the beer, then probably simmers it down. As a result, it’s the sweetness of the blueberries one gets, and not a sugary, syrupy, sweet goo. With hints of nutmeg, it’s a wonderful concoction.
At $4, it’s one of the best pie buys in Texas right now.
Kathryn took a bowl of cinnamon ice cream, another steal at $2.
Blueberry bock pie and cinnamon ice cream, together?
(Also: I stuck with appetizers — the lamb lollipops will make lamb lovers, also love Olenjacks.)
We’ll be back. Rumor is the fruit pie changes ever few days. There’s a strawberry rhubarb in the mix.
More:
Olenjack’s sits almost across the street from JerryWorld, where the Cowboys play. Great game day gathering spot for before and after the game — close to the Rangers’ Ballpark in Arlington, too. Playoff headquarters?
Can you imagine the contretemps had he announced he won’t enforce federal immigration laws, nor support their enforcement by federal officials?
Abbott is once again putting politics far, far ahead of science, no matter how it damages Texas (Texas pays premiums in home insurance already because of damage from global warming).
If it’s something in the water that generates such craziness, I hope it enters the water systems well south of Dallas.
Abbott’s opponent is a well-respected, deeply experienced, honorable attorney named Barbara Ann Radnofsky. Almost every big polluting corporation in America is supporting Abbott. You may want to consider that as you contribute to candidates this week (hurry!), and as you vote this fall.
The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886, designated as a National Monument in 1924 and restored for her centennial on July 4, 1986.
The Statue of Liberty has been a fixture in the U.S. and American psyche, too. Excuse me, or join me, in wondering whether we have not lost something of our former dedication to the Statue of Liberty, and the reasons France and Americans joined to build it.
Poem-a-Day sent Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” out this morning (Poem-a-Day is a wonderful service of the American Academy of Poets — you may subscribe and I recommend it). There it was, waiting for me in e-mail. My students generally have not heard nor read the poem, I discover year after year — some sort of Texas-wide failure in enculturation prompted by too-specific requirements of federal law and state law, combining to make a slatwork of culture taught in our classrooms with too many cracks into which culture actually falls, out of sight, out of mind; out of memory. I fear it may be a nationwide failure as well.
Have you read the poem lately? It once encouraged American school children to send pennies to build a home for the statue. Today it wouldn’t get a majority of U.S. Congressmen to sign on to consponsor a reading of it. Glenn Beck would contest its history, Rush Limbaugh would discount the politics of the “giveaways” in the poem, John Boehner would scoriate the victims in the poem for having missed his meeting of lobbyists (‘they just missed the right boat’), and Sarah Palin would complain about “an air-bridge to nowhere,” or complain that masses who huddle are probably up to no good (they might touch, you know).
Have you read it lately?
The New Colossus
by Emma Lazarus
Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde - Wikimedia Commons image
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Is the Academy of American Poets playing politics here? It’s September 12. Yesterday many Americans took part in ceremonies and service projects in remembrance of the victims of the attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. In much of the rest of America, there is an active movement to nail shut the “golden door,” to turn out a sign that would say “No tired, no poor nor huddled masses yearning to breathe free; especially no wretched refuse, no homeless, and let the tempest-tost stay in Guatemala and Pakistan.”
Does that lamp still shine beside the golden door?
Stereoscopic image of the arm and torch of Liberty, at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia; Robert N. Dennis Collection, New York Public Library. The arm was displayed to encourage contributions to the fund to build a pedestal for the statue, from private donations.
_____________
* I’m calculating Liberty’s gaze at about 40 feet below the tip of the torch, which is just over 305 feet above the base of the statue on the ground. The base is probably 20 feet higher than the water, but this isn’t exact science we’re talking about here.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 