Cover of Germany’s Der Spiegel, May 12, 2018, after President Donald Trump announced U.S. would no longer participate in nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran.
With his decision to blow up the Iran deal, U.S. President Donald Trump has thrown Europe into uncertainty and anxiety — and raised the specter of a new war in the Middle East. One thing is certain: the trans-Atlantic relationship has been seriously damaged
Read this Der Spiegel editorial from Germany. America’s closest allies have lost faith in the United States because of Trump’s bullying & disrespect. Putin’s biggest foreign policy goal has been achieved: to weaken the West by splintering the NATO alliance
Do you think it’s that bad? What can we do about it? Comments are open.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Brian Klaas on Twitter.
The new cover from Der Spiegel, one of the most respected publications in Germany. This is how our friends in Europe see Trump’s America. This matters. When America First actually means America Alone, the United States is significantly weaker. pic.twitter.com/kRWYvxdQ81
Feynman lecturing, with six chalkboards full of equations, diagrams and notes. CalTech? Feynman would have been 100 years old on May 11, 2018. This became the “lost lecture,” now found; photo may be March 13, 1964.
His popular books shattered readers’ preconceptions of scientists as lab-coated nerds and replaced them with a hipper image of a wild non-conformist; his scholarly tomes introduced researchers to revolutionary methods of grappling with modern physics. https://t.co/8nMYbsnfFy
Richard Feynman was one of the last great physicist celebrities, universally acknowledged as a genius who stood out even from other geniuses. https://t.co/jsWlIuqSIm
There are those who look critically at Feynman’s life, and recognize his flaws — as Feynman did, too. This is an interesting thread.
Richard Feynman, whose 100th birthday is on May 11th, was a brilliant scientist who was a more complicated man than what his self-generated anecdotes made him appear. I encountered him as a teenager, and my own views changed over time. https://t.co/JmRwdXc2BY
Aside from developing the most precisely tested theory in science history & winning a Nobel prize for it, Richard Feynman also liked to draw & would frequent strip clubs to work on his physics problems: work notes like this were discovered after he died https://t.co/ubgKEUbMcBpic.twitter.com/9YuDrxoGDS
Reading Feynman's 1962 notebooks at the Caltech Archives @CaltechArchives in preparation for my talk at the Feynman 100 celebration on May 11 – 12. "How Feynman Found Ghosts While Quantizing Gravity" #Feynman100pic.twitter.com/0M6Mpz2Jrj
May 11, 2018, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Feynman (born 1918, died 1988).
Most Feynman fans are celebrating through the entire year — appropriately, for a man so much larger than life and unable to be constrained after death.
We should mark the actual day, I think. It would be a good thing to celebrate science on May 11 in his honor, I think. And, there are lots of other good ways to commemorate a great guy.
Richard Feynman. Borrowed from Luciano’s Tumblr, LikeaPhysicist
Feynman’s birthday falls on Statehood Day for Minnesota. You can fly your flag for both causes, if you wish, Minnesota’s statehood AND Feynman’s birthday. No proclamation will issue from the White House, but you can fly your flag any day.
Why Feynman Day? To celebrate invention, physics, interesting characters, and that essential, American quality of je ne sais quoi.
In addition to his winning the Nobel Prize for Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), Feynman popularized the critique of science and other enterprises with what we now call Cargo Cult science, or education, or whatever, where people follow the dance steps, but without the rhythm and music.
Those two things alone would make him a remarkable man. But, like a product offered for $19.95 as a good buy in a 2:00 a.m. infomercial, with Feynman, there’s more. With Feynman, there is always more.
I got alerted to Feynman in the first days of the old Quality Paperback Book Club, when they featured his new memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! QPBC was hot on the book, and with a title like that, how could I resist? When I got the book a week or so later, I read it within two days, while attending law school and working full time. I remember Feynman.
A New York Times bestseller—the outrageous exploits of one of this century’s greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original.
In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman recounts in his inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature.
All true, and that’s not even the half of the outrageousness, all done with great good humor, about a life lived in great good humor through what should have been a memorable age, but often was just terrifying.
I think sometimes that Feynman’s calm alone, borne of that great good humor and insatiable curiosity, may have gotten us through the birth of the Atomic Age and the Cold War.
Feynman was a giant, and we don’t revere him enough. Consider:
Feynman’s high school sweetheart, Arlene, came down with tuberculosis. He married her, and took her with him to New Mexico to make atom bombs. The stories of her confinement to a hospital, and the laborious trekking he had to make between Los Alamos and her bedside in Santa Fe, are touching, and heartbreaking. It is one of the great love stories of the 20th century, certainly, and perhaps for all time. It also provided the title for his second memoir, What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Every single, college-age man should read Feynman’s stories of how to date, and how to seduce women. Women should read it, too, to know what’s happening. Consent is necessary. His approach was unique, and endeared him to women — in legend, to many women. Feynman’s dating must have been part of the inspiration for the comedy series, “Big Bang Theory.” Feynman’s stories are better. (Heck, it’s even the subject of a popular, classic XKCD comic — probably only Feynman and Einstein among Nobel-winning physicists have made so much money for so many cartoonists.)
USPS authorized a special postal cancel (United States Postal Service) to honor the 80th birthday of Richard Feynman. This cancel was used in Lake Worth, Florida. For this special day the post office was renamed “Feynman Station.”
The Feynman Diagram used for the postal cancel on this envelope depicts what is known as a “bubble process.” It shows a high energy particle, for example, a cosmic ray (a) from a distant supernova, which emits a high energy photon, for example, a gamma ray (b). The photon, in turn, creates a particle (c) and an anti-particle (d) that exists for a brief moment and then recombines.
As Feynman liked to point out, an anti-particle is the same thing as a particle with negative energy traveling backward in time (which is why the arrow at (d) points backwards, i.e. to the left). So you could say the photon created only one particle that, at first, traveled forward in time (the bottom semi-circle) and then reversed and went back in time (the top semi-circle) and annihilated itself! By inventing diagrams like this, Richard Feynman made it much easier to understand what is going on in the interactions between sub-atomic particles without getting lost in tremendous amounts of tedious math
Working at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, Feynman developed a keen appreciation for bureaucracy and all its follies. His vexations for the security managers are also legendary. Here’s a quick version of one story — he asked friends and family to write to him in code, but to not include a key to the code, so he’d have to crack the code to read the letter. Feynman could do it, but the security people couldn’t. Hilarity ensued.
Feynman developed a love for the still-relatively unknown, landlocked Asian nation of Tannu Tuva. It’s just the sort of place to appeal to a character like Feynman — so obscure most atlases didn’t, and don’t, show it at all — seemingly consumed by the Soviet Union, but held in a special status. Home of throat singing — and almost impossible to get to. During the Cold War, Feynman struck up correspondence with people in Tuva, to the concern of Soviet and American intelligence agencies, who seemed not to understand someone might do such thing out of curiosity. Feynman hoped to travel there to visit new friends, but his final bouts of cancer took him before it was possible. Tuva, famous among philatelists only, perhaps, honored Feynman with postage stamps and postcards.
Just try to find a photo of Feynman not smiling. The man was a joy to be around, for most people, most of the time.
Quantum electrodynamics? No, I can’t explain it, either — but his work had a lot to do with how particles wobble. I remember that because, according to Feynman, he got the inspiration for the work for which he won the Nobel while spinning plates, like a Chinese acrobat on the Ed Sullivan Show, to the delight of students in the Cornell University cafeteria, and the shock and horror of the food service people. Who else has yet confessed to such an inspiration for a Nobel?
There’s more — a lot more. Feynman outlined our current generation of computer memory devices — in 1959. No, he didn’t patent the idea. He did patent an idea for a nuclear-powered spacecraft. Another delightful story.
Feynman was featured in print and broadcast ads for Apple — not one, but two (did anyone else get that honor from Apple?). “Think Different.” This is one of Apple Computer’s most successful advertising campaigns. The theme of the campaign is one that celebrates figures in history who changed the world by thinking differently. Richard Feynman was among the chosen figures. Image from the Feynman Group.
Feynman served on the board that approved science books for the California school system –– his stories of that work will shock some, but it will make others shake their heads as they recognize the current crop of cargo-cultists and political bullies who dominate textbook approval processes, knowing nothing at all about what they are doing, or why.
No, I didn’t forget his brilliant work on the commission that studied the Challenger disaster, for NASA. There’s so much stuff to glorify!
In history, Feynman should be remembered much as we remember Thomas Jefferson, as a renaissance man in his time, a man who put great intellect to great work for his nation and all humanity.
The second Apple ad featuring Richard Feynman. An excerpt from Apple Computer’s campaign commercial: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them… about the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things, they push the human race forward; and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
The sages say we shouldn’t have regrets, but I do have one. When the Challenger Commission was meeting in Washington, D.C., I was working on another commission up the street. I knew Feynman was ill, but our work was important, and we’d heard his disease was in remission. I didn’t goof off a day and go to any of the hearings to see him, to get an autograph, to meet the man. I thought I’d have other opportunities to do that. Now I regret not having met him in person.
In print, and in film, I know him well. In our family, reading Feynman is something everybody does. Feynman’s memoir was one of the last books I read to our son, Kenny, as he was growing up, and growing into reading on his own. Even reading about Feynman, together, was an adventure. Our son, James, took us into the real physics of Feynman, and though I struggle with it more than James, we still read Feynman, for humor, and physics.
What would be appropriate ways to mark Feynman’s birth? At some future date, I hope we’ll have public readings of his books, showings of the documentaries about him, recreations of his lectures, perhaps. And then everyone can get in a circle, beating drums and singing about getting some orange juice, before sending postcards to our friends in Tuva.
Richard Feynman, we still need you, and miss you dearly.
Tuva’s capital is the delightfully-named Kyzyl. From this map, can you figure out where Tuva is, or how to get there — without Google, or Bing?
Tuva postcard, in honor of Richard Feynman — who loved to drum.
There will always be “More” about Richard Feynman, if we’re lucky:
Do not miss the Friends of Tuva site, which is as much a tribute to Feynman from his good friend Ralph Leighton as it is a tribute to the great little nation of Tuva.
“Early Morning on the Avenue in May 1917,” Frederick Childe Hassam, oil on canvas, 1917; Addison Gallery of American Art. Description from the Addison Gallery: “Early Morning on the Avenue in May 1917 belongs to a series of flag paintings that Frederick Childe Hassam created during World War I, between 1916 and 1919. Totaling nearly thirty canvases, the series constituted the artist’s last significant body of work. It demonstrates his vigorous brushwork, bright palette, and what the critics called his truly American interpretation of the French aesthetic of Impressionism. “French Impressionists had recorded contemporary life, usually under bright, sunny spring skies. Hassam was also interested in capturing weather conditions: Early Morning on the Avenue is distinct in the series for its overall whiteness, the brilliancy of the hue transforming the cloudless blue sky to a pearly white and bleaching the buildings and sidewalks to opalescent tones. The flag paintings, however, were not just about weather and light. They were begun in response to the flag displays and parades that were organized in New York City as part of the war effort. Hassam was a patriot and an ardent Anglophile, and he used these paintings to demonstrate his support for the Allies. Color and light therefore took on a metaphorical significance, the pervasiveness of white in Early Morning on the Avenue suggesting purity and the righteousness of the Allied cause.”
Twelve events on fourteen days to fly the U.S. flag. May could be quite busy for flag fliers.
Law Day, May 1, AND
Loyalty Day, May 1
Victory in Europe Day, May 8
Minnesota Statehood, May 11
Mothers Day, May 13
Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15 (half-staff flags; the law for Police Week calls for flags to be half-staff the entire week in which May 15 occurs, May 14-20 in 2017)
Armed Forces Day, May 19
National Maritime Day, May 22
South Carolina Statehood, May 23, AND
Wisconsin Statehood, May 23
Memorial Day, May 28
Rhode Island Statehood, May 29
US flag flying at the U.S. Supreme Court’s west portico, suitable for Law Day, May 1. (But this photo was taken in June, 2012; Alex Brandon/AP)
Yes, this is an encore post. Defeating ignorance takes patience and perseverance.
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Wait. You didn’t fly your flag today because you were waiting for me to tell you to do it?
Oh, you know Congress passed a resolution years ago encouraging flying the flag, even when the President of the U.S. doesn’t issue a formal proclamation, right?
President John F. Kennedy at the 1963 State of the Union Address, in front of the U.S. flag displayed in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Kennedy signed the law designating May 1 as Law Day, in 1961. Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House, in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. Public Domain
President Trump declared May 1, 2018, as Law Day, and a day to fly the flag.
President Donald J. Trump Proclaims May 1, 2018, as Law Day, U.S.A.</3>
April 30, 2018
On Law Day, we celebrate our Nation’s heritage of liberty, justice, and equality under the law. This heritage is embodied most powerfully in our Constitution, the longest surviving document of its kind. The Constitution established a unique structure of government that has ensured to our country the blessings of liberty through law for nearly 229 years.
The Framers of our Constitution created a government with distinct and independent branches — the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial — because they recognized the risks of concentrating power in one authority. As James Madison wrote, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” By separating the powers of government into three co-equal branches and giving each branch certain powers to check the others, the Constitution provides a framework in which the rule of law has flourished.
The importance of the rule of law can be seen throughout our Nation’s history. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits States from denying persons the equal protection of the laws or depriving them of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The commitment to the rule of law that led the country to ratify that Amendment was no less powerful than the commitment to the rule of law that led the country to ratify the original Constitution.
That commitment to the rule of law lives on today. It drives the debates we see around the country about the growth of the administrative state and regulatory authority, and about the unfortunate trend of district court rulings that exceed traditional limits on the judicial power. We also see that commitment in the people’s demand that their representatives comply with the Constitution, and in the Representatives and Senators themselves who take seriously their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower first commemorated Law Day in 1958 to celebrate our Nation’s roots in the principles of liberty and guaranteed fundamental rights of individual citizens under the law. Law Day recognizes that we govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather according to the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will. Through law, we have ensured liberty. We should not, and do not, take that success for granted. On this 60th annual observance of Law Day, let us rededicate ourselves to the rule of law as the best means to secure, as the Preamble to our Constitution so wisely states, “the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87–20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2018, as Law Day, U.S.A. I urge all Americans, including government officials, to observe this day by reflecting upon the importance of the rule of law in our Nation and displaying the flag of the United States in support of this national observance; and I especially urge the legal profession, the press, and the radio, television, and media industries to promote and to participate in the observance of this day.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-second.
DONALD J. TRUMP
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
From Instagram: pkwanpiOf course there’s a #newtcrossing — this is #berkeley after all! In Tilden Regional Park
Oakland side of San Francisco Bay has a stunning string of parks from the water’s edge, following abandoned rail lines, through parks in the city, wending and winding up into the mountains into real wilderness. It’s impressive, decades later, to remember the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors touring these sites as they were being redeveloped from abandoned industrial sites, real brownfield recovery — and see what a grand complex it is now.
And there, one may find a newt crossing one’s path. Watch out for the newts!
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Moving ice on Utah Lake, from a drone movie by Bill Church, screen capture.
Where does the great @BillChurchPhoto post his photos? (Update: On Instagram, and sales at BillChurchPhoto.com.) His work around Utah Lake, and Utah, is spectacular (and I hope people buy his images so he’s making money off of the great art he’s captured).
Here is a photo of plain old Utah Lake, in February. Church makes it look beautiful and exciting, instead of just cold and muddy.
Poster on the event! “Joys and Perils of Self-Publishing,” April 26, 6:00 p.m., Half-Price Books at Northwest Highway in Dallas (the Mother Ship). Bob Reitz and Gardner Smith.
Bob Reitz is the curator of the Jack Harbin Museum at Camp Wisdom, one of the finest museums of Scout materials in the country, focused on Scouting in the Circle 10 Council BSA (Dallas and surrounding counties). He and Gardner Smith trek and travel about Texas and the West, and for a time published a series of exquisite books, string bound, fancy paper, and extraordinary content. Great reads.
This presentation is probably a good one for authors, publishers, book lovers, poetry lovers and travelers.
I wonder if there is CPE credit available — and for which professions?
Bob Reitz at an earlier presentation, on Dallas history.
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Good news for students, probably for teachers — and of course, for careful historians.
The Library of Congress digitized Ben Franklin’s papers. They are online for investigation (and use in student projects, and creation of lesson plans, Document-Based Questions (DBQs), etc.).
Now we can put to bed all those fake quotes attributed to Franklin, and discover again great stuff he said that is too often ignored, right?
Press release offers details.
New on the Web: Papers of Benjamin Franklin Now Online
This print shows Benjamin Franklin seated at a desk, looking to his right at an electrical device. In his left hand are papers upon which he is taking notes, and visible through a window to his left is lightning striking a building. (Edward Fisher, engraver, after a painting by Mason Chamberlin, 1763. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
The papers of American scientist, statesman and diplomat Benjamin Franklin have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress. The Library announced the digitization today in remembrance of the anniversary of Franklin’s death on April 17, 1790.
The Franklin papers consist of approximately 8,000 items mostly dating from the 1770s and 1780s. These include the petition that the First Continental Congress sent to Franklin, then a colonial diplomat in London, to deliver to King George III; letterbooks Franklin kept as he negotiated the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War; drafts of the treaty; notes documenting his scientific observations, and correspondence with fellow scientists.
“Benjamin Franklin made history and won respect around the world as a diplomat, publisher, scientist and scholar,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “We are thrilled to make this collection of documents by one of the nation’s founding fathers available to highlight his unique role in American history.”
Highlights of the Franklin papers include:
Two copies of the petition the First Continental Congress sent to Franklin to present to King George III in 1774 “to lay our grievances before the throne.”
Franklin’s scientific speculation on the speed of ships in 1775 while on board a vessel returning from England to America just before the Revolutionary War.
Correspondence with John Adams, King George III, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington, among others.
Franklin’s Craven Street letterbook, one of the few pre-Revolutionary letterbooks from Franklin to survive, documenting his life as a colonial diplomat in London.
Letters exchanged with his wife, Deborah Read Franklin, and his son, loyalist William Franklin, before their estrangement.
Franklin’s drawing of bifocal glasses, which he is credited with inventing.
Franklin’s letter explaining the effects of lightning on a church steeple.
The Franklin papers have been at the Library of Congress for more than 100 years but had a turbulent history. Many of Franklin’s early papers were scattered and damaged, though he accumulated many more. When he died in 1790, Franklin left his papers to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, who published some of them as the “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin” in 1817-1818. Some of the papers Temple Franklin published were later found cut up in a London tailor shop. The papers were eventually returned to the U.S., purchased by the U.S. government and kept at the U.S. State Department until the early 20th century, when they were transferred to the Library of Congress.
Additional Franklin papers are held by the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania, both of which Franklin founded in Philadelphia.
The digitization of the Franklin papers is part of a larger effort to make historical materials available online. Other newly digitized collections include the papers of U.S. Presidents James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James K. Polk, and the papers of Alexander Hamilton, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov. [end press release]
Had I more to say, I’d say it.
Explore the papers, let us know what you think. Comments are open.
(Is it odd that we know more about Ben Franklin’s taxes than we know about Donald Trump’s?)
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Frustratingly, the only information from @BestEarthPix is “Oregon, USA.” It’s a mule deer, in a lake. Which lake? Who was the lucky/skilled photographer? No details.
Can you supply details? The photographer should get credit, I think.
The Flat Mountain arm of Yellowstone Lake at sunrise, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2016. Image courtesy Neal Herbert/Yellowstone National Park. Gado Images/Alamy Stock Photo
How disappointing, and maddening, that what looks like a great image turns out to be faked.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
South Reading Room. Mural of Thomas Jefferson with his residence, Monticello, in the background, by Ezra Winter. Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.; photo by the great photographic historian Carol Highsmith
So, what are you doing to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson on April 13?
Murals by Ezra Winter also decorate the South Reading Room. The theme for these four murals is drawn from Thomas Jefferson’s writings, which are inscribed on the paintings and reflect Jefferson’s thoughts on Freedom, Labor, the Living Generation, Education, and Democratic Government. The characters and costumes depicted are those of Jefferson’s time. A portrait of Jefferson with his residence, Monticello, in the background is in the lunette above the reference desk at the north end of the room; the words in the lower left- had corner explain that THIS ROOM IS DEDICATED TO THOMAS JEFFERSON .
On the left half of the panel on the east wall, Jefferson’s view on Freedom is depicted:
THE GROUND OF LIBERTY IS TO BE GAINED BY INCHES. WE MUST BE CONTENTED TO SECURE WHAT WE CAN GET FROM TIME TO TIME AND ETERNALLY PRESS FORWARD FOR WHAT IS YET TO GET. IT TAKES TIME TO PERSUADE MEN TO DO EVEN WHAT IS FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.
Jefferson to Rev. Charles Clay, January 27, 1790
Jefferson’s views on labor [and farmers], also on the east wall, are taken from his Notes on Virginia:
THOSE WHO LABOR IN THE EARTH ARE THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OF GOD, IF HE EVER HAD A CHOSEN PEOPLE, WHOSE BREASTS HE HAS MADE THE PECULIAR DEPOSITS FOR SUBSTANTIAL AND GENUINE VIRTUE. IT IS THE FOCUS IN WHICH HE KEEPS ALIVE THAT SACRED FIRE WHICH OTHERWISE MIGHT NOT ESCAPE FROM THE EARTH.
From Notes on Virginia, 1782
On the south wall, the panel over the clock contains a quotation about the Living:
THE EARTH BELONGS ALWAYS TO THE LIVING GENERATION. THEY MAY MANAGE IT THEN AND WHAT PROCEEDS FROM IT AS THEY PLEASE DURING THEIR USUFRUCT. THEY ARE MASTERS TOO OF THEIR OWN PERSONS AND CONSEQUENTLY MAY GOVERN THEM AS THEY PLEASE.
Jefferson to James Madison, September 6, 1789
On the left half of the panel on the west wall, Jefferson’s view of Education is illustrated:
EDUCATE AND INFORM THE MASS OF THE PEOPLE. ENABLE THEM TO SEE THAT IT IS THEIR INTEREST TO PRESERVE PEACE AND ORDER, AND THEY WILL PRESERVE THEM. ENLIGHTEN THE PEOPLE GENERALLY, AND TYRANNY AND OPPRESSION OF THE BODY AND MIND WILL VANISH LIKE EVIL SPIRITS AT THE DAWN OF DAY.
Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787 (first two sentences);
Jefferson to P.S. Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 18l6 (last sentence).
Actors dressed in American Revolution-era garb mark Thomas Jefferson’s 275th birthday in a ceremony at Jefferson’s home, Monticello. WVIR-TV Channel 29 image
Yes, this is an encore post. Defeating ignorance takes patience and perseverance.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
The fin de siècle newspaper proprietor / F. Opper, 1894, Puck. Summary: Print shows a newspaper owner, possibly meant to be Joseph Pulitzer, sitting in a chair in his office next to an open safe where “Profits” are spilling out onto the floor; outside this scene are many newspaper reporters for the “Daily Splurge” rushing to the office to toss their stories onto the printing press, such stories as “A Week as a Tramp!! Wild and Exciting Experiences of a Daily Splurge Reporter”, “A Reporter of the Daily Splurge Spends a Thrilling Week in an Asylum!”, “An Organ Grinder’s Life”, “Life in Sing Sing – a Splurge Reporter in Disguise”, “Divorce Court Details”, “Private Scandal”, “a Night Around Town” by a woman reporter “in Men’s Attire”, life on the streets “As a Flower Girl”, “Thrilling Exposé”, “How beggars are treated on 5th Ave. by Fanny Fake”, and “High Spiced Sensation”. A notice hanging on the wall of the office states “The Motto of the Daily Splurge – Morality and a High Sense of Duty.” Library of Congress image
You’ve been watching news on TV all your life (you should have been reading your local daily newspaper, too . . . but I digress), and you hate to admit you’re having a tough time telling when Trump lies to you, or someone lies about Trump.
There is help available, for thinking people.
EdTechAdvocate features technology the editors consider useful for teachers and students in schools.
Occasionally school overlaps with real life.
Here are eight apps the publication recommends for teachers and students, to help them use their critical faculties to determine what news is accurate, and what news isn’t. From an article by Micheal Lynch.
No reason we shouldn’t use these tools for everyone, even people out of school for decades.
The recommendations, and links to the eight tools:
As fake news, biased media, and internet hoaxes abound, students need to be taught digital literacy from the time they start using computers. Fortunately, there are resources available for students to check their facts.
This site provides balanced news from all perspectives, so students can sort through facts and distinguish between differences in opinions easily. The site also offers a specialized search option where you filter results. Additionally, it offers a school toolbox with a variety of useful resources and lesson plans.
Teaching students how to evaluate websites and information is a necessary skill. The CRAAP Test designed by Meriam Library, California State University, Chico is helpful in guiding students through evaluating the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of information.
This website is a non-profit, nonpartisan site which is a Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center allows students to ask questions and search. Additionally, it also allows students to ask science questions on public policy issues.
This website focuses on debunking hoaxes or urban legends, as well as email hoaxes and internet scams. It also provides information on how to protect your email and computer.
One of the original fact-checking websites, Snopes is a popular site for identifying misinformation and debunking internet rumors. Students can search with keywords or by plugging in a URL.
The Ted-Ed video, “How to Choose Your News” by Dan Brown is designed for students. Using imagery and explanations they will understand, Dan Brown explains how to be a critical thinker and savvy evaluator when it comes to reading (or watching) the news.
Another website that focuses on debunking internet rumors, e-mail hoaxes, and questionable images where students can search information as well.
Teachers need to explain how media biases work and change facts to fit their needs. By teaching students to use fact checking tools, teachers are strengthening their digital literacy skills.
Detail from “Fin de seicle newspaper proprietor,” by F. Opper, 1894, Puck Magazine. Library of Congress image via Wikipedia
What are your favorite sources of solid information, and what are your methods of determining who is pulling your leg, and who is not?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I’ll have to beg forgiveness from Tim Lambert, but in the interest of accuracy and good history, I have captured below the post Tim Lambert had on the old Deltoid blog (at the Seed Science Blogs site), dealing with Indur Goklany’s errors on DDT.
A bit of other history: Anthony Watts despises my posts (me, too, probably) and I am banned from his site for various sins including calling him out for suggesting Rachel Carson and President John F. Kennedy had more than an occasional handshake personal relationship (a bizarre charge Christopher Monckton repeats and exaggerates on in slightly different ways). Watts and I disagree on what we should regard as facts; I take the old collegiate debate and Scout Law positions, he sides with the Heartland Institute parody/comedy/hoax troupe.
Watts was having none of my corrections. Tim Lambert, who has researched this particular area of pro-DDT hoaxing more than anyone else, was kind enough to respond.
This is borrowed from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, until, and then maybe a supplement to, the reappearance of Deltoid’s archives at the new site. As of April 10, 2018, I have not checked the links. If links don’t work, please tell me in comments, and I’ll work to get a new link to the old information where possible.
For instance, malaria incidences in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) dropped from 2.8 million in the 1940s to less than 20 in 1963 (WHO 1999a, Whelan 1992). DDT spraying was stopped in 1964, and by 1969 the number of cases had grown to 2.5 million.
With widespread resistance of A. culicifacies to DDT, malathion spraying was introduced in 1975 in areas of P.falciparum transmission affording protection to nearly one million people. Towards the end of 1976 DDT spraying was completely discontinued and during 1977 exclusively malathion was used as an adulticide.
Note that the scale for malaria cases is logarithmic, so there was a factor of ten reduction in the number of cases in a few years after DDT spraying was discontinued.
The misinformation about DDT and malaria that Goklany spreads is harmful and could kill people. DDT still has a place in the fight against malaria (because of insecticide resistance we need as many different insecticides as possible), but there are more effective means available, and by trying to undercut the use of the best methods for fighting malaria, Goklany will be responsible for people dying from malaria.
[End, quote from Tim Lambert’s old Deltoid blog]
Now, is it possible that the comments will copy as well as the blog post? There are some good ones in there.
Here’s a try at copying the comments, below the fold.
It’s sort of a game: Which four people should be ensconced in much larger-than-life stone sculptures on the side of a mountain (preferably an ugly mountain that is not sacred to any First Nation, but I digress)?
Found a puzzle slanted toward a Rushmore of science, featuring Einstein, Curie, Newton and Darwin.
Puzzle created by Discover, honoring four greats of science.
Mount Bluesmore, in the old Legends venue: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Howlin’ Wolf.
Heck, this could be a great game: Name four people in any profession, art, field of endeavor, who should be featured on a Mount Rushmore-style monument. Above we’ve got science and Chicago blues. On the real Mount Rushmore, we’ve got the Rushmore of U.S. Presidents.
The real Rushmore, in South Dakota. It features Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln, left to right. National Park Service image.
What other monuments could we have? Painting? Picasso and Rembrandt . . . but there are so many.
Renaissance painting. Abstract painting. Landscapes, portrait painters. Architects. Rock musicians. Classical musicians. Baseball. Football. American football. Fiction authors. Engineers. Women scientists. Tuskegee airmen (that would be tough; every one of them deserve it).
Who do you nominate, for what field? Put nominations in comments. Include pictures if you find one.
Others have played this game:
Rushmore of Disastrous Presidents, featuring Trump, Hoover, George W. Bush, and Richard Nixon. By Dan Adel for Vanity Fair magazine.
Adel’s original, in 2007, featured Warren G. Harding in place of Trump.
Vanity Fair’s Disastrous Presidents Rushmore, in 2007, by artist Dan Adel, adding Warren G. Harding, before Trump.
A ghost Rushmore, featuring Native American leaders:
Four Native Americans posed as alternatives for Rushmore. (Challenge: Can you accurately identify the four? Please do.)
A classical music proposal (would you choose differently?)”
Left to right, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Gagambo, at Deviant Art.
Sioux tribes have undertaken a drive to respond to what many consider a desecration of their sacred lands, with a massive monument to Crazy Horse, still being carved, and incredibly impressive (if you visit, spend a lot of time at the museum):
Jeff McGrath (@youtah) on Twitter: Utah Lake is just stunning right now. This was taken at the Northern End with my drone while flying for recreational fun. #utwx #dronephotography #recreationaldrone
Northern end of Utah Lake, near Lehi, probably near the old boat launch and harbor near where the old amusement park Saratoga was (now a town loaded with housing tracts).
My grandfather, Leo Stewart, Sr., came into the world 30 or so miles south, in Benjamin, Utah, named after a family patriarch of sorts, Benjamin Franklin Stewart. When he was very young, my grandfather said, they’d boat out a half-mile or so into the lake and look down into 20 feet of water, and pick the giant trout they’d want to hook. That was in the late 19th century, of course.
In that sorry time 30 years later, some fool introduced European carp into the area, for more game fish. Carp dig up the shallow bottom and muddy the water. In my youth along the lake you could never see more than six inches into the lake. Because it was so far from everything else important, a steel plant was built at Geneva, about midway between north and south ends of the lake, during World War II — in case the mills in California were bombed. U.S. Steel eventually ended up with the plant.
From our home on the Lake Bonneville bench, 800 feet or so above the lake, we could watch the steel mill’s pouring of slag at night, a little flow of artificial magma to light the sky and look cool. The mill also dumped chemicals into the water which further clouded the view.
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
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