From the History Matters site at George Mason University, a quiz about quotes attributed to presidents — formatted, ready for classroom use. Only three out of the seven are accurate? There are some surprises.
Classroom quiz: Did they really say it?
November 20, 2006
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Posted by Ed Darrell
But, did George really say it?
November 19, 2006I have nothing new or enlightening to add to the discussion about whether George Washington actually added “so help me, God” to his oath of office when he assumed the presidency of the United States. So let me merely point you to History is Elementary, where the issue is covered very well.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, America's founding, Good Quotes, History, History Revisionism, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Atomic history
November 15, 2006I spent a decade of my life chasing compensation for the downwind victims of fallout from the U.S. government’s testing of atomic devices at the Nevada Test Site — I was working for a Utah politician, and many of the victims were Utah citizens unfortunate enough to live in small towns where, some idiot calculated, the damage from the fallout would be minimized and possible to deny.
Over at Axis of Evel Kneivel, where the Carnival of History 43 is hosted this week, I found this post on the November 5 anniversary of a 1951 atomic bomb test that involved moving hundreds of innocent soldiers to be exposed to radiation in order to test whether they could fight after an atomic exchange.
If Santayana was right, if learning history will help us to prevent the bad parts from recurring, it is urgent that you go read that post, and that you vow to prevent the recurrence of things such as a calculated sacrifice of innocent U.S. citizens.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Atomic Bomb, Cold War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Hubble didn’t “kill God”
November 12, 2006Stu Hasic argues that a photo from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) “killed God,” or at least the notion that God played a role in creation.
Where do bloggers get such fantastic, erroneous ideas? My educated guess is that most preachers looking at this photograph of hundreds of galaxies (no, not individual stars), deep in space and therefore deep back in time, would be awestruck — and were they to preach about it, they’d call this evidence of God’s hand in creation, making a leap in logic and faith about equal to that of Hasic, but in the opposite direction. Hasic’s post nicely encapsulates some of the knowledge we get from the photo, but then he leaps to an unwarranted conclusion.
Hasic argues that since the photo is a brilliant refutation of some of the less scientific claims of creationism, it disproves God.
If Man is the purpose of creation, why did it take so long to create Man? And what’s with all the over-the-top elaborate sky decorations? Surely some painted white dots on a big canvas hung around the Earth would have sufficed?
Thanks should go to Hubble for opening our eyes. If only some men would open theirs. Being a Christian or being a Muslim means being different. Being a Human means being the same.
I can’t speak for all Christians, of course, but I’d wager most Christians would agree with Hasic’s last sentence there: Being a human means being the same as other humans. That’s rather the point of much of scripture (see Ecclesiastes, for many examples). I would also note that most Christians like the Hubble photos as much as anyone else. Photos of “star incubators” (see end of the post for an example) are among the more popular images in religious publications in the last decade. Contrary to Hasic’s assertion, the photo offers no challenge at all to any belief of most Christians. Read the rest of this entry »
13 Comments | Accuracy, Astronomy, Current History, Physics, Religion, Research, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
News coverage of “new” flag ceremony for Air Force
November 6, 2006[Sad, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal appears to have taken down this story and photo] Photo by John Gurzinski from the Las Vegas Review-Journal: Inside Thunderbirds Hangar at Nellis AFB, Airman 1st Class Michael Thayer, left, and Senior Airman David Prye demonstrate how to fold a U.S. flag.Inside the Thunderbirds Hangar at Nellis AFB, Airman 1st Class Michael Thayer, left, and Senior Airman David Prye demonstrate how to fold a U.S. flag. Photo by John Gurzinski, Las Vegas Review-Journal [Replacement photo]
Airman First Class Michael D’Ancona and Senior Airman Assad Pharr demonstrated how to properly fold an American flag during a special visit to Robbins Lane Elementary School in Syosset on May 23. (Syosset-Jericho Tribune, June 19, 2014; photo added here October 2014)
How did I miss this? The Las Vegas (Nevada) Review-Journal carried a story on July 4, 2006, on the Air Force’s efforts to replace the old, unofficial and misleading flag folding ceremony, with a new one. It has the script for the new ceremony.
The newspaper said:
Capt. Isham Barrett, Air Force action officer on Honor Guard policy, said the new script was developed because reference to the flag in the U.S. code “does not associate anything with any fold of the flag.”
“We don’t want to force a belief on somebody,” he said.
Barrett said the decision to develop a standardized script wasn’t prompted by someone complaining about religious connotations. “We can’t find anything in our files with regard to complaints,” he said.
Nevertheless, Christopher J. Andersen, an Army sergeant and member of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, wrote a letter in 2003, asking the U.S. Air Force Academy to remove the unofficial script from its Web site.
“In order to ensure this religious flag-folding ceremony is not portrayed as an official, government-sponsored flag-folding ceremony, I ask you to remove it from your .gov site,” wrote Andersen.
Andersen, who could not be reached last week, noted in his letter that the Air Force Academy removed the old script from its Web site after he complained.
Air Force leaders later set out to develop a script based on history rather than one that could be interpreted as contrary to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Combined with the Free Exercise Clause — “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — they prohibit endorsement of a national religion or a preference for one over another. They also preclude dominance of religion over nonreligious philosophies, according to a 1994 Supreme Court majority opinion.
The new standardized script based on history was approved by Air Force leaders in July 2005 and first appeared in revised Honor Guard protocol manuals in January.
Three cheers for the Air Force (yes, I’m biased, for family reasons).
Tip of the old scrub brush to Linda Case.
Update October 22, 2014: The new, Air Force-approved script for a flag folding ceremony is at the Betsy Ross site. Use it in good patriotic spirit, and in the spirit of accurate history.
9 Comments | Accuracy, Flag etiquette, History, Patriotism | Tagged: Accuracy, Flag etiquette, History, Patriotism, US Air Force | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Condemned to repeat history
October 29, 2006There is a moral in this story. On Thursday, October 26, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald faced a woman proposed as an expert witness in the defense of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney accused of obstruction of justice.
The woman forgot history. Literally. She could not recall exactly what she had written in the past, and in a dramatic confrontation, she appeared to have forgotten that she had been cross examined by Mr. Fitzgerald in a trial before. Details from the Washington Post. How does her credibility stack up for the judge, do you think?
There were several moments when Loftus was completely caught off guard by Fitzgerald, creating some very awkward silences in the courtroom.
One of those moments came when Loftus insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald. He then reminded her that he had cross-examined her before, when she was an expert defense witness and he was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York.
Libby’s defense team declined to comment.
Santayana’s ghost isn’t exactly smiling, but did take note.
2 Comments | Accuracy, Ethics, History, Law | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Radical right-wing bias in the press
October 13, 2006Liberal press? You must be kidding.
Apart from the fact that media owners are all very conservative types, there is the tendency to stifle reporting with a left- or moderate-bias, while promoting right-biased news. Evidence?
A Reuters reporter wrote a book about Ann Coulter, after getting permission from Reuters. They fired him when he showed them the galleys. It’s circumstantial evidence, sure, but still, it’s convincing to some.
More comment at Majikthise.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Intelligent design – a pig that doesn’t fly
October 9, 2006We’re talking past each other now over at Right Reason[*], on a thread that started out lamenting Baylor’s initial decision to deny Dr. Francis Beckwith tenure last year, but quickly changed once news got out that Beckwith’s appeal of the decision was successful.
I noted that Beckwith’s getting tenure denies ID advocates of an argument that Beckwith is being persecuted for his ID views (wholly apart from the fact that there is zero indication his views on this issue had anything to do with his tenure discussions). Of course, I was wrong there — ID advocates have since continued to claim persecution where none exists. Never let the facts get in the way of a creationism rant, is the first rule of creationism.
Steve Sack cartoon in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Discussion has since turned to the legality of teaching intelligent design in a public school science class. This is well settled law — it’s not legal, not so long as there remains no undisproven science to back ID or any other form of creationism.
10 Comments | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, denialism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Law, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, denialism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Law, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Based on a true story — except, not Texas. Not a chainsaw. Not a massacre.
October 8, 2006Nota bene: Be sure to see update, here.
First, there was the woman who squealed in class when I mentioned Travis County, the Texas county in which resides Texas’s capital city, Austin. She said later she had thought it was a fictional county. By the way, she asked, was the rest of the “Texas chainsaw massacre” story true, too? (I have never seen any of these movies; I understand the 2003 version was set in Hewitt, Texas, which is a real, small Texas town near Waco, between Dallas and Austin — but not in Travis County. I’m not sure what Travis County has to do with any of the movies.)
Victims of a real Texas chainsaw massacre: Victims await “processing” at a sawmill in Nacogdoches County. Photo by Ron Billings, Texas Forest Service.
Since then, in the last couple of weeks I have had at least a dozen requests to teach the history behind the movie, the “true story.” The movies are all highly fictionalized, I note. Perhaps I should plan a day to discuss real Texas murders, and just what fiction is, especially from Hollywood.
According to Snopes.com, one of my favorite debunking sites, there was never a Texas chainsaw massacre. There was a Wisconsin farmer who stole corpses from the local cemetery, and upon whom was based the earlier Alfred Hitchcock movie, Psycho. There was the chainsaw exhibit at Montgomery Ward seen by writer/director Toby Hooper, when he needed inspiration to finish a screen treatment. That’s about it.
But it’s nearing Halloween, and the studios in Hollywood hope to make money.
There are real Texas crimes that would be good fodder for movies, in the hands of intelligent and creative people. One wonders why more movies aren’t done on the real stories. Read the rest of this entry »
120 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, History, How do we know what we know, Movies, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Bogus history, Hewitt Texas, History, Kent Biffle, Movies, Texas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Mass Murders, Thomas Hewitt | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Hard Work (and cheating)
October 7, 2006Good and careful consideration of cheating in school, especially with regard to different disciplines in college, in a post at Aude Sapere*. That post is well written, very thought provoking, and well worth the time one might spend on it. The figures are depressing, generally, but reflect a general view we hear from students too often — in an era when top government officials cheat to get what they want (think: why did we invade Iraq?), students often test to see whether we can detect their cheating, and to see what we’ll do about it.
The grand mystery to me is this: It’s generally more time consuming, and more difficult, to try to cheat, than it would be to learn the material well enough to pass my exams; why bother to cheat? The day that light dawns on a student is always a good day.
I am hopeful that part of the rise in confessed cheating is due to an increased sense of just what cheating is. Borrowing quote cards from a debate colleague is considered required sharing; using those same quote cards to put together a paper for another class — is that over the line? (I don’t regard it as cheating, but I’d be interested in hearing if you do.) Do today’s students consider that forbidden? Are today’s students more moral?
Short essays are a good way to get around most cheating, but short essays create grading nightmares that grow exponentially with the number of students.
What’s the solution?
Another blog takes a look at Florida legislation which, to me, is part of the cheating problem. Tony Whitson at AAACS Matters! calls for action against the Florida law which aims to avoid “interpretation” in teaching history, but which also dabbles in changing the facts of nature for biology study, and generally tends to politicize public school curriculum.
It seems to me that the Florida legislature is doing the same thing high school cheaters hope to do — when the facts are difficult or troubling, change them. High school kids can’t change certain facts of history that they do not want to bother to learn, but legislatures, with a great finger in the eye of history, learning and democracy, can try.
And, if presidents and state legislators can play fast and loose with the facts, why shouldn’t a high school student at least try to do the same? If our kids watch what we do, and not what we say, we may be in for several years of increased cheating.
- . .
* Aude sapere is Latin, a line from Kant; it means “dare to know.” I posted it over my classroom door for three years; only a few students ever asked about it. Each of them subsequently took up Kant’s challenge, either continuing their quest for knowledge in history or economics, or more often, taking up such a quest for the first time.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Current History, Curricula, Education, Ethics, Pedagogy, Plagiarism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Surprise! Hitler banned Darwin, instead of embracing evolution
October 4, 2006Nick Matzke at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) advised and coached the plaintiff’s lawyers in the Dover case, and in general has made himself useful tracking down the real history of creationism and intelligent design. He’s at it still, and over at Panda’s Thumb tavern he reports that, contrary to Coral Ridge Ministries’ D. James Kennedy’s claims that there is a direct connection from Darwin to Hitler, Darwin made the list of books banned, and perhaps burned, by the Nazis.
Matzke’s work raises serious issues with Richard Weikart’s claim, in From Darwin to Hitler, that there is a direct link.
Interesting reading. Go look.
4 Comments | Accuracy, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, World War II | Tagged: Accuracy, Book Burning, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Point of personal pique: Mitch Rasansky, stay away from my kids
October 4, 2006This morning’s Dallas Morning News carries a sad story. Dallas City Councilman Mitchell Rasansky’s campaign against an Eagle Scout project finally bore fruit for Rasansky — he persuaded the city’s parks department to remove three bat houses which had been installed in a city park.
Rasansky first complained last spring. Irrationally, against all evidence, he said he thought the bat houses were a menace. When a storm of public opinion overwhelmed him, he backed off. The 70,000 or so Scouts and Scouters of Circle 10 Council relaxed, happy to know that the Eagle’s project was at work, reducing mosquitoes and, thereby, reducing the risks of West Nile virus.
Is it unfair to suggest Rasansky hates Boy Scouts? Probably. Is it unfair to suggest he’s mean and doesn’t let rationality get in the way of good public policy? I doubt it. Consider: 11 North Texans have died from West Nile virus already this year — 16 24 people have died across Texas — and Rasansky’s evidence of danger from the bats is a story of a rabid bat in Houston. One bat? One of the deaths from West Nile virus was an otherwise healthy young man who lived within a few hundred yards of my son at the University of Texas at Dallas. West Nile is not a minor problem around here.
Worse, Rasansky kept his actions secret this time. He got the bat houses removed without notice to the Scout who put them up, nor notice to anyone else concerned.
Some people told me Mitch Rasansky is really a nice guy, when this flap first arose last spring. I gave him the benefit of the doubt then. Not now.
Any man who favors West Nile virus over the public service project of an Eagle Scout has his priorities wrong at best, and is a menace to public health at worst. I don’t want a person running my town who can’t figure out that West Nile virus is a greater health hazard than bats.
Who is running against Rasansky? Arm that woman (or man) with some facts, and let the race begin, even though we’re months away from the election.
More information: See the Organization for Bat Conservation for more information about bats and their benefits.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Ethics, Hoaxes, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
More on lack of integrity in creationism
September 28, 2006Still buried in work, I have a couple of items that really should get note.
First up is a new eruption of creationist propaganda, attempting to cast recent research findings as some sort of challenge to evolution theory. Dr. P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula has the essential comments so far.
That was quick! Now, can I find time to talk about Texas textbooks, too?
Update, September 29, 2006: Carl Zimmer notes that the research the creationists complain about, rather than demonstrating a problem with evolution theory, demonstrate the ways in which evolution theory guides researchers. Zimmer’s posts at The Loom frequently dazzle — he’s an understated, extremely accurate writer whom you may recognize from his articles in the New York Times’ weekly science section (on Tuesdays).
1 Comment | Accuracy, Creationism, Darwin, Ethics, Intelligent Design | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Fillmore’s bathtub — metaphor?
September 19, 2006One of my searches turned up what appears to be a well-informed essay from 1999 by Wendy McLemore, “The Bathtub, Mencken, and War.” According to her curriculum vitae, the article originally appeared in a publication called Ideas on Liberty, “The Bathtub, Mencken, and War,” Vol. 49, No. 9 (September 1999).
While the article is available on the author’s website, I have not found a link from her blog to the article. So let me urge that you make a second foray, and check out her blog, too. A word of warning — while I haven’t found anything at the blog that is not suitable for viewing at work (NSVW), this is the subtitle the blog: “A site for individualist feminism and individualist anarchism.”
McLemore argues that Mencken was not merely fighting deadline, but was writing a close satire of the difficulties he had getting stories published during World War I that did not condemn Germans willy-nilly. She writes that Mencken was a great appreciator of German culture, and did not go along with propaganda that merely demonized Germany and Germans.
She also wrote that it was Andrew Jackson who introduced the bathtub to the White House, in 1834. This contrasts with the White House story I noted earlier, attributing the introduction of the tub to Fillmore’s wife in 1853. (Before my hard-drive crash, I wrote to the White House historian asking for a check of the veracity of that story. I’ve got nothing in response.) What is McLemore’s source for the Andrew Jackson tub?
We continue the search for the Truth about White House bathtubs. Go read McLemore’s essay.
Post script: Go see what Cecil says about Millard Fillmore, at the column archives for Straight Dope.
1 Comment | Accuracy, Bogus history, Fillmore's bathtub, Hoaxes, Millard Fillmore, World War I | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Inherently dishonest: Creationism
September 16, 2006If you’re interested only in history and education, and if you think there is no overlap between the people who try to censor biology textbooks and those who try to “reform” history books, you may go to the next post and skip this one.
Quote accuracy is a big deal to me. When creationists can’t look you square in the eye and tell the truth about what another human being said, they lose my confidence, and their arguments lose credence. I think all scholars and policy discussants have an obligation to readers, policy makers, and the future, to try to get right quotations of famous people. I think this responsbility is particularly important in health and science issues. It was in the vein of checking out the accuracy and veracity of quotes from creationist publications some (okay — many) years ago for a minor issue Congress was dealing with that I discovered the depths of depravity to which creationists stoop to try to make their case that creationism is science and should be taught in public school science classes — or that evolution is evil, and shouldn’t be taught at all. Famous writings of great men like Charles Darwin regularly undergo a savage editor’s knife to make it appear he wrote things quite contrary to what he wrote with regard to science and evolution, or to make it appear that Darwin was a cruel or evil man — of which he was quite the opposite.
With the great benefit of having the Library of Congress across the street, I would occasionally track down obscure sources of “quotes” from scientists, only to discover in almost every case where creationists claimed science was evil, or wrong, that the creationist tracts had grotesquely distorted the text they cited. It was as if the creationist authors had been infected with a virus that made them utterly incapable of telling the truth on certain things.
Over the years I have observed that dedicated creationists tend to lose the ability to tell when they have stepped over the line in editing a quotation, and have instead changed the meaning of a quotation to fit their own ends. This the inherent dishonesty of creationism. It affects — it infects — almost all creationists to one degree or another. Many creationists seem to be under the influence of a virus that renders them incapable of telling a straight story about science, or Darwin.
I ran into a raging case recently. It would be amusing if not for the fact that the creationist seems to be an otherwise rational person.
13 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Ethics, Evolution, First Amendment, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Public education, Religious Freedom, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 