An Aussie’s attempt to label the state of the U.S. Don’t laugh — how well can you do labeling a map of Australia? From Texas Hill Country’s Facebook feed, and unknown origin past that.
Found this at the Facebook site of Texas Hill Country. A little rough for high school geography, especially if it’s ninth grade geography (surely you can moderate this a bit, teachers), but a good idea for a quiz?
How well can your students do labeling the U.S.? Will they find this person’s obvious anguish and creative non-answers amusing? Can they do better?
Now turn the tables: How well can your students in the U.S. do labeling a map of Australia? Canada? Mexico?
Ask your students: Is it important to know such stuff? Why?
And you, Dear Reader: What do you think?
Here you go, a map of Australia to practice with:
Unlabeled map of Australia to label! Royalty free produce of Bruce Jones Design, Inc., copyright 2010
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
From the Deseret News: “Ben Lomond Peak towers above Ogden (Utah). The mountain is believed to have inspired the Paramount movie logo, below, in use since 1914. (Ravell Call, Deseret News)
It’s none of the above because one of Hollywood’s most familiar images — the famous Paramount Pictures logo — was inspired by Weber County’s Ben Lomond Peak.
As such, Ben Lomond — not even the highest summit in Weber County — may be the most famous mountain in the Beehive State.
The peak is given credit for prompting creation of the majestic but fictional mountain in the popular Paramount design, based on two histories of the motion-picture company.
According to Leslie Halliwell’s “Mountain of Dreams,” a biography of Paramount, founder William Hodkinson grew up in Ogden and the logo was “a memory of childhood in his home state of Utah.”
Compare it to the Paramount Pictures logo now:
Paramount Pictures logo
Teachers may want to hustle over to the Deseret News site to capture the story for classroom use — the online version includes a short set of slides of a hike to the top of the peak (it’s a climb most reasonably healthy people can make in a day – “reasonably healthy” to include acclimated to the altitude).
What other geographic features have become commercial logos? How do images of geography affect our culture?
For my money, I still like Timpanogos better, even if the Osmonds did use it.
This image of Mt. Ben Lomond looks more like the Paramount logo, some might say.
Magician Marco Tempest pushes the boundaries on use of iPhones in magic tricks — is it magic, pure electronics, or what we want to see?
Tell us in comments how you could use this shorter-than-usual TEDS video as a bell-ringer, teachers — or as an ice-breaker, meeting facilitators and corporate trainers:
Tip of the old scrub brush to Michelle Gardiner, who suffered my bass playing with quiet equanimity.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I could see a bell-ringer in there somewhere. Who do you think ought to see this thing? What classes in public schools should see it, for what purpose?
I hope the year-long series lives up to the video. I hope there are a lot more videos to go along with it. As a piece of persuasive rhetoric, it does make a decent case for subscribing to National Geographic for a year. How’s that for rhetorical criticism?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
One of what should be an occasional series of posts on American iconic places, natural features, sights to see, etc. For studies of U.S. history and U.S. geography, each of these posts covers subjects an educated American should know. What is the value of these icons? Individually and collectively, our preservation of them may do nothing at all for the defense of our nation. But individually and collectively, they help make our nation worth defending.
This is a less-than-10-minute video you can insert into class as a bell ringer, or at the end of a class, or as part of a study of geologic formations, or in any of a number of other ways. Yosemite Nature Notes provides glorious pictures and good information about Yosemite National Park — this video explains the modern incarnation of Half Dome, an enormous chunk of granite that captures the imagination of every living, breathing soul who ever sees it.
Potential questions for class discussion:
Have you put climbing Half Dome on your bucket list yet? Why not?
Is it really wilderness when so many people go there?
How should the National Park Service, and the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, manage these spectacular, completely unique features, both to preserve their wild nature, and allow people to visit them?
What are the federalism issues involved in protecting Half Dome, or any grand feature, like the Great Smokey Mountains, Great Dismal Swamp, Big Bend, Yellowstone Falls, or Lincoln Memorial?
And that got me thinking: What if Edith Wharton had Facebooked? Had she lived in our time and communicated digitally, I wonder what her literature would be like. Looking at five days of cursive writing and personal letters made me realize that her compulsion to jot down her thoughts was no different than ours today when we tweet about what we had for lunch or share some fab link we just discovered. The difference between a letter written longhand and a Facebook post is that one takes a little bit longer (and leaves a more lasting trace), but the purpose is the same. Whether we live on a grand, Whartonian scale or a quieter, more ordinary one, we feel more significant when we share intimacies about ourselves with others.
There’s a good warm-up and/or journaling exercise in there for literature teachers.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I know you think you know what you see; what you think you see may not be what you actually see. Your brain modifies what you think you see, in order to make it appear sensible, and in doing so, it sometimes makes you see things quite differently from what they are. Don’t forget that.
So, how do we know what we know? How do we know that what we know is correct?
Surely this could be made into a bell ringer/warmup. Check out the images for other geographic forms, and great photos of them. Nose around the ESA site, there are some great finds. Can you quickly identify this image, for example (without looking at the name of the photo file)?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
If a day goes by that I don’t get a question about one of these sites, it’s a very slow day.
Those questions tell me something else: Students have genuine interests in geography, and in mysteries. Students will pay attention to lesson plans that include one or more of these sites in them, especially if you refer to the mystery.
How about just a geography search: How close is the closest site to you? Can students visit these sites on their summer vacations? What airport is closest for tourists? What arrangements need to be made to visit the place?
Wired.com provides the video — your students have the questions. Can you provide the answers, or lead them to the answers? How about listing your answers in comments?
No, Obama didn’t change his mind. He’s changing the way government does business — putting government on a more solidly-based, business-like model for performance, according to at least one observer. That’s the shift discussed.
And it’s about time, I say.
Max Stier’s commentary on the Fed Page of the Washington Postquickly lays out the case that Obama’s making big changes. Copy it for students in your government classes (or history classes, if you’re studying the presidency in any depth). Stier wrote:
There are some fundamental reasons why our federal government’s operational health has been allowed to steadily deteriorate. It’s hard to change what you don’t measure, and our government operates in an environment with very few meaningful and useful measurements for performance. Perhaps more significantly, it is run by short-term political leadership that has little incentive to focus on long-term issues.
A typical presidential appointee stays in government for roughly two years and is rewarded for crisis management and scoring policy wins. These individuals are highly unlikely to spend significant energy on management issues, when the benefits of such an investment won’t be seen until after they are long gone.
(According to the Post, “Max Stier is president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, a group that seeks to revitalize the federal government.” I don’t know of him otherwise.)
Political appointees can be good, but too many have not been over the past 25 years. A bad enough political appointee can frustrate even the most adept, dedicated-to-the-people’s-business career federal service employees, and frustrate the law and good management of agencies.
Let’s wish them all good luck.
Potential questions to follow-up this article in discussions:
Constitution: Under the Constitution, who specifically is charged with managing the federal agencies, the “federal bureaucracy? What is that charge, in the Constitution?
Constitution, politics: What is the role of Congress in managing the federal bureaucracy?
Evaluating information sources: Do some research on the internet. Is Max Stier a credible source of information on managing federal agencies? Why, or why not? Who provides an opposing view to Stier’s? Are they credible? Why or why not?
Evaluating information sources: Is the Fed Page of the Washington Post a good source of information about the federal bureaucracy? (Students may want to investigate columnists and features at this site; the Fed Page was started as a one-page feature of the newspaper in the early 1980s, covering for the public issues that tended to slip through the cracks of other news coverage, but which were very important to the vast army of federal employees and federal policy wonks in Washington.) What other sources might be expected? What other sources are there? (Federal News Radio is another site that focuses on the functions of the federal agencies — Mike Causey started out writing the column on the bureaucracy in the Washington Post; this is an AM radio station dedicated to covering federal functions in the federal city. Other sources should include National Journal, and Congressional Quarterly, especially if you have those publications in your school library).
History, maybe a compare and contrast question: How has the federal bureaucracy changed over time? Compare the size, scope and people employed by the federal government under the administrations of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, James Garfield, William McKinley, Dwight Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton. What trends become clear? What major changes have occurred (civil service protection, for example)?
Analysis: How does the transition process from one president to the next affect federal employees and the operation of government?
Analysis: How does the transition of President Barack Obama compare with past transitions — especially that of President Franklin Roosevelt, who also faced a tough economic crisis, or Ronald Reagan, whose transition signalled a major shift in government emphasis and operation?
What other questions did your students find in this article? Comments are open.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
From the Deseret News: “Ben Lomond Peak towers above Ogden (Utah). The mountain is believed to have inspired the Paramount movie logo, below, in use since 1914. (Ravell Call, Deseret News)
It’s none of the above because one of Hollywood’s most familiar images — the famous Paramount Pictures logo — was inspired by Weber County’s Ben Lomond Peak.
As such, Ben Lomond — not even the highest summit in Weber County — may be the most famous mountain in the Beehive State.
The peak is given credit for prompting creation of the majestic but fictional mountain in the popular Paramount design, based on two histories of the motion-picture company.
According to Leslie Halliwell’s “Mountain of Dreams,” a biography of Paramount, founder William Hodkinson grew up in Ogden and the logo was “a memory of childhood in his home state of Utah.”
Compare it to the Paramount Pictures logo now:
Paramount Pictures logo
Teachers may want to hustle over to the Deseret News site to capture the story for classroom use — the online version includes a short set of slides of a hike to the top of the peak (it’s a climb most reasonably healthy people can make in a day – “reasonably healthy” to include acclimated to the altitude).
What other geographic features have become commercial logos? How do images of geography affect our culture?
For my money, I still like Timpanogos better, even if the Osmonds did use it.
See the 2012 update of this post; there is a bit more information available on the 100th anniversary of Paramount Pictures.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
School kids and people seeking naturalization as citizens of the U.S. should be able to tell you there are 13 stripes on the U.S. flag, one for each of the original 13 colonies. The top stripe is red, and the bottom stripe is red.
Oops. The U.S. Postal Service printed a stamp that features what looks like a flag with a 14th stripe.
Representations of the general usage, first class postal stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service in April 2008 -- and, is that a 14th stripe on the flag in the lower right? The four original, correct paintings were done by Laura Stutzman of Mountain Lake Park, Maryland.
The error appears on the fourth of a four-stamp plate known as the “Flags 24/7 stamps.” The flag is portrayed flying at four different times of the day, sunrise, noon, sunset, and night. The night portrayal carries the last-minute art revision that looks like a 14th stripe, on the bottom of the flag.
Errors in stamps drive up collectors’ prices — USPS says it has no plans to change the stamp now, so it won’t become a rarity.
Please note that flags flown after sunset should be specially lighted to be flown; the U.S. flag code suggests flags should be retired at sunset, otherwise, except at a few locations where the flag may be flown 24 hours a day, by law. USPS said:
For more than 200 years, the American flag has been the symbol of our nation’s source of pride and inspiration for millions of citizens. In May of 1776, Betsy Ross reported that she sewed the first American flag.
Federal law stipulates many aspects of flag etiquette. In 1942, a code of flag etiquette was established. The code states in part that the American flag should be displayed from sunrise to sunset every day, weather permitting, but especially on days of national importance like Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and Veterans Day. Also, federal law requires that “when a patriotic effect is desired,” the flag can be flown through the night if properly lit. Although compliance is voluntary, public observation of the code’s measures is widespread throughout the nation.
Teachers, can you use this for a warm-up/bell ringer exercise on flag 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 
