March 21, 2007
President Harry S Truman shows a headline from the Chicago Tribune, a headline incorrectly calling the previous day’s election for Truman’s opponent.
If textbook fights, school curricula litigation and constant internet sniping got you thinking the clash between science and religion is a tough problem to work on, you should look at the clash between news gathering organizations and their financiers who argue that economics says news should be dead.
Not all should be doom and gloom in the news biz. Tim J. McGuire, dean of the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, argues that the delivery of the news still needs newspapers, and that newspaper economics show that profits can be produced by good, mainstream news outlets: “Writing off newspapers is premature, irresponsible.”
McGuire doesn’t ignore the bad news:
The circulation declines are undeniable. Some metropolitan newspapers have lost 10 percent of their circulation in the past three years. Classified revenues at some big newspapers are off by $50 million to $100 million in the same period. Layoffs and news-hole reductions are breathtaking. Short-sighted corporations are trying to cut their way to better profit margins.
He points to a different view: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
March 19, 2007
Winston Churchill delivering the “Iron Curtain” speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946 – Photo by George Skadding
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”
Sir Winston S. Churchill, in a speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946, titled “The Sinews of Peace.”
Some historians mark the beginning of the Cold War from this speech, in which a respected world leader first spelled out the enormous stakes at issue, and also pointed out that Russian, communist totalitarian governments were replacing more democratic governments in nations only recently freed from the spectre of Nazi rule, in World War II.
Oh, why not: Below the fold is the speech in its entirety, from the transcript at the Churchill Centre. Read the rest of this entry »
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5 Comments | Accuracy, Cold War, Democracy, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Quotes, Winston Churchill | Tagged: Accura, Accuracy, Cold War, Democracy, Famous quotes, freedom, Quotes, Westminster College, Winston Churchill | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 16, 2007
Is it just technical, or is it something I said? Does the Chinese government have no use for Millard Fillmore, who sent an expedition to Japan to open up trade there, or is it the thought of bathtubs that puts them off?
Any way it is sliced, according to GreatFirewallofChina.org, this blog is not viewable in China.
Test your own, or someone else’s: Test.
Odd consideration: Fox News is also blocked from China. Who could object to that, except on principle? On the one hand, one appreciates the good taste shown in blocking the site. On the other hand, even garbage journalism has rights in the U.S.
Okay, we’ll stick with principle: Not even Fox News should be blocked.
And, just to be sure, if a site you test produces a result that suggests it is available in China, will you let me know? I found very few available.
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9 Comments | Free speech, Freedom - Political, Freedom of Information, Human Rights, Technology, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 15, 2007
About the capitalist states, it doesn’t depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don’t like us, don’t accept our invitations, and don’t invite us to come and see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.*
Nikita Sergeyevich Khruschev (1894-1971); reported statement at a reception for Wladyslaw Gomulka at the Polish Embassy, Moscow, November 18, 1956
Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev enjoying a hot dog in Des Moines, Iowa, during his 1959 tour of the U.S. (Photo from American Meat Institute, National Hot Dog & Sausage Council, http://www.hot-dog.org)
* The exact phrasing of the last line is debatable. As Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 16th Edition has it, “Neither the original nor the translation of the last two sentences appeared in either Pravda or the New York Times, which carried the rest of the text. Another possible translation of the last sentence is: We shall be present at your funeral, i.e., we shall outlive you; but the above is the familiar version.”
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3 Comments | Cold War, Famous quotes, Free market economics, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Good Quotes, History, Politics, Quotes, Socialism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 9, 2007
1968 brought one chunk of bad news after another to Americans. The year seemed to be one long, increasingly bad disaster. In several ways it was the mark of the times between the feel-good, post-war Eisenhower administration and the feel-good-despite-the-Cold-War Reagan administration. 1968 was depressing.
What was so bad? Vietnam manifested itself as a quagmire. Just when Washington politicians predicted an end in sight, Vietcong militia launched a nationwide attack in South Vietnam on the Vietnamese New Year holiday, Tet, at the end of January. Civil rights gains stalled, and civil rights leaders came out in opposition to the Vietnam war. President Johnson fared poorly in the New Hampshire primary election, and eventually dropped out of the race for the presidency (claiming he needed to devote time to making peace in Vietnam). Labor troubles roiled throughout the U.S., including a nasty strike by garbage collectors in Memphis. It didn’t help to settle the strike that the sanitation workers were almost 100% African American, the leadership of Memphis was almost 100% white, and race relations in the city were not so good as they might have been – the strike attracted the efforts of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – who was assassinated there in early April. In response, riots broke out in 150 American cities.
More below the fold, including the key confession to “penetration.” Read the rest of this entry »
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6 Comments | 1968, Dissent, Elections, Free speech, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Heroes, History, Hoaxes, Space exploration, Vietnam | Tagged: 1968, Confessions, Elections, freedom, History, Hoaxes, Lloyd Bucher, North Korea, Space exploration, USS Pueblo, Vietnam | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 27, 2007
Michael King, writing in the Austin Chronicle (a weekly newspaper, as I recall), December 24, 2004:
A moment of nondenominational silence for longtime Christian fundamentalist textbook critic Mel Gabler, who died Sunday in Longview at 89. Gabler and his wife, Norma, had long been fixtures at State Board of Education textbook review hearings, although in recent years age and declining health had lessened their participation. The Longview News-Journal reported that Gabler “emphasized accuracy and a Christian perspective in examining school children’s books,” but it would be more true to say that the Gablers and their “Education Research Analysts” never let the former get in the way of the latter. Gabler was notorious for his attacks on any positive mention of evolution in biology textbooks, insisting that “special creation” get equal time and that the textbooks record “what’s wrong” with evolutionary theory. His reviews did indeed reveal factual errors in the textbooks – but his moralistic Pecksniffery is reflected best in statements like this, on mathematics texts: “When a student reads in a math book that there are no absolutes, suddenly every value he’s been taught is destroyed. And the next thing you know, the student turns to crime and drugs.” May he take it up with the Master Mathematician. – M.K.
Tip of the old scrub brush to . . . drat! From whom did I get this link?
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1 Comment | Freedom - Political, Good Quotes, Religious Freedom, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 21, 2007
For a decade of my life I was deeply involved in the fight to get compensation for downwind victims (most from Utah) of the fallout from U.S. atomic bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site. In the course of that time I saw a variety of amazing fibs told by the government — hoaxes that injured and killed people. I grew to respect those whistleblowers who had the guts and patriotism to cry foul on the hoaxes.
Leroy Lee died about a month ago in Santa, Idaho. He was a seasonal government worker, a timber stand examiner — a tree counter. As low guy on the totem pole, it was not his job to take the global view. Still, he noted that there were fewer growing trees in the forests than the U.S. Forest Service claimed, and much more cleared land, too, clearcut.
The Forest Service was lying to Congress about millions of dollars of harvests on public lands. Lee blew the whistle. Officials had hoaxed up on paper, forests that didn’t exist, in 15 of the west’s National Forests.
It wasn’t a big scandal as scandals go, but the Kootenai National Forest still works to straighten things out, mostly in litigation. Most hoaxes are exposed by honest, hard-working people like Leroy Lee. They are heroes of our republic. Many of them remain unsung, like Lee.
In his “day job,” Lee taught physics, chemistry and biology at St. Maries High School, St. Maries, Idaho.
More information:
- Lowbagger.org, “Scientist who unearthed ‘phantom forest’ scandal dies”
- Spokane, Washington, Spokesman-Review, “Forest Activist, Leroy Lee, 50, Dies.“
- Demarcated Landscapes, “Update, Leroy Lee Ceremony” and “Leroy Lee, 1956-2007“
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Posted by Ed Darrell
February 18, 2007
Working to figure out history, one constantly asks how we can know what happened in the distant past. In our justice system, we use some of the same tools to learn what happened in the near past, or immediate past, to help dispense justice in criminal trials or establish liability in civil trials. Strong skepticism helps in discarding bad theories, and in assembling data into a cohesive story that reveals what we often call “truth.”
American skepticism runs too shallow.
Recent surveys and reports provide a wealth of data for discussion.
First, out of a conference a meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Francisco on February 15, we get a report that only 40 percent of Americans put stock in the biology theory of evolution. In contrast, in European nations there is 80 percent acceptance of the theory. The report is by Michigan State University Science and Mathematics Education Prof. Jon Miller, based on a study he published in 2006. Miller worries about implications for public policy in a republic:
“The number of public policy controversies that require some scientific or technical knowledge for effective participation has been increasing. Any number of issues… point to the need for an informed citizenry in the formulation of public policy.”
Miller ran a clinic at the meeting, urging scientists to improve their school boards by running for election.
On the whole, scientific literacy in the U.S. is improved over a decade ago. Massive pockets of ignorance still plague science and public policy, however.
Two, socialists argue that the U.S. and Britain are tough places for kids to grow up. No kidding. One key thing to watch: Can critics of the report find real information to rebut, or will the response be solely to try to brand the socialists as socialists, and therefore, somehow, inexplicably, evil.
But, as if to suggest an answer, the 54th Skeptics’ Circle is up, over at Action Skeptics.
Update, February 20, 2007: Oh, yes, I had meant to mention this, too — see Larry Moran’s discussion on a fellow who went through the motions to get a Ph.D. in geology, but doesn’t believe in it (scrub brush tip to P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula). In this fellow’s case, it’s not how he knows what’s true, it’s whether he knows anything at all, perhaps.
Among the more common errors I run into are errors of evidence — people who grant credence to reports that do not merit credence, people who fail to give weight to reports that should be given weight. I see this almost every time I get into a courtroom, where one lawyer team or both get into amazing discussions over minor points, elevating them to serious issues that lead justice astray (cf., the trial of O. J. Simpson and the DNA evidence derailment); I see this in public testimony before government bodies, where people confuse opinion with fact, and when they fail to adequately weight hard, conclusive data.
How do we know Abraham Lincoln lived at all? I asked one class of middle schoolers. We would know for certain if only he were mentioned in the Bible, one kid quickly said, with agreement from several others. Cecil Adams is right, the fight against ignorance is taking longer than we thought.
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4 Comments | Dissent, Education, Elections, Evolution, Freedom - Political, Public education, Science, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 15, 2007
First they deny science, then all of reality, then they deny that they denied. Or something like that.
Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges denies having written or sent the memorandum that was circulated in his name to Texas state legislators earlier this week. The Atlanta Constitution provides the incredible details in this morning’s edition:
“I did not put it out nor did I know it was going out,” Bridges said. “I’m not defending it or taking up for it.”
The memo directs supporters to call Marshall Hall, president of the Fair Education Foundation Inc., a Cornelia, Ga.-based organization that seeks to show evolution is a myth. Hall said he showed Bridges the text of the memo and got his permission to distribute it.
“I gave him a copy of it months ago,” said Hall, a retired high school teacher. “I had already written this up as an idea to present to him so he could see what it was and what we were thinking.”
Hall said his wife Bonnie has served as Bridges’ campaign manager since 1996.
Bridges acknowledged that he talked to Hall about filing legislation this year that would end the teaching of evolution in Georgia’s public schools. Bridges said the views in the memo belong to Hall, though Bridges said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.
It’s getting so creationists no only can’t do science straight, can’t do religion straight — they can’t even tell whoppers straight. Read the rest of this entry »
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1 Comment | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Education, Evolution, Freedom - Political, Hoaxes, Public education, Religious Freedom, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
February 14, 2007
I’ve never seen a pro-breast cancer post before. That post is easily as crazy as the kid I had in class who said he’d never let his “baby mama” breast feed his son, because he didn’t want his son to be “homo.” That was from a kid steaming to be a high school dropout.
Nuts. Why don’t people just stick to the facts?
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Posted by Ed Darrell
February 11, 2007
Today is Evolution Sunday. It’s a day when thinking Christians make a modest stand for reason, it’s a day when caring Christians make a stand for facts and truth, versus calumny and voodoo science and voodoo history.
Debunking hoaxes — finding the truth about who put the first plumbed bathtub in the White House, repeating the debunking of the “Lady Hope hoax” that claimed Darwin recanted his life’s work on his deathbed, holding a spotlight on the facts of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the events in the Gulf of Tonkin, highlighting the bravery of Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher and the crew of the Pueblo, noting that there never was a family of chainsaw murderers in Travis County, Texas — is difficult work. One wag I used to see posting on an internet bulletin board had a tagline, “Fighting ignorance since 1974 1973– it’s taking longer than I thought.”*
So, if you’re in church today, light a candle against the darkness, as Carl Sagan would say. Candles show us where demons are not, and where it is safe for humans to go. The more candles against ignorance, the greater the realm for human reason.
As Einstein almost certainly did not say, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. And as Frank Zappa probably did say, hydrogen is not the most abundant thing in the universe — ignorance is. Light some candles against ignorance today, in church or out of it. Reason gives us hope, and there is precious little of both today.
Be grateful for those things that keep us free, for those things that keep us seeking and acquiring knowledge, and for those people (like P. Z. Myers) who prod us — righteously — to stand up for the truth.
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1 Comment | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Education, Evolution, First Amendment, Free speech, Freedom - Political, Public libraries, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 27, 2007
Texas newspaper columnist Molly Ivins fights cancer in an Austin area hospital. 
Editor & Publisher:
Her assistant Betsy Moon says she may be able to go home Monday. She adds that those close to Ivins are “not sure what’s going to happen, but she’s very sick.”
The 62-year-old columnist had taken an earlier break from her syndicated column, but resumed writing earlier this month.
Last October she had suggested this headline to an E&P interviewer: “Molly Ivins Still Not Dead.”
Ivins’ column carries a strong defense of traditional American liberalism, the love for education, home, family and a good story. Fiercely dedicated to getting the story right when she was a beat reporter (I encountered her when she covered the Rocky Mountain area for the New York Times), Ivins contributed some of the best stories on politics over the past three decades that I have read her work.
Heal up, get back to work, Molly.
Also see: “A ‘troop surge’ is not acceptable to most Americans,” Bangor (Maine) Daily News, January 17, 2007
Tip of the old White House scrub brush to Virgotext.
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2 Comments | Accuracy, Freedom - Political, History, Journalism, Texas, Texas Freedom Network | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 24, 2007
Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the State of the Union speech for 1941 on January 6. Eleven months and one day later, Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii. I have been fascinated by Roosevelt’s clear statement of the freedoms he thought worth fighting for, especially considering that most Americans at that moment did not consider it desirable or probable that the U.S. would get involved in the war that raged across the Pacific and Atlantic.
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, August 9, 1941; aboard the U.S.S. Augusta, in the Atlantic. Library of Congress.
Here is an excerpt of the speech, the final few paragraphs:
I have called for personal sacrifice, and I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my budget message I will recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying for today. No person should try, or be allowed to get rich out of the program, and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
If the Congress maintains these principles the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause. Read the rest of this entry »
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11 Comments | 1941-1945, Accuracy, Famous quotes, Franklin Roosevelt, Free speech, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Good Quotes, History, Lesson plans, Presidents, Quotes, Religious Freedom, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 10, 2007
It is national Delurking Week. We all learn more in conversation, when we all listen. The comments sections at the end of each post are there so you can add what you know. A few people have provided great corrections and wonderful links. Commenters are far, far less than 1% of visitors here.
Speak up! Please.
Tip of the scrub brush to Pharyngula, and Adventures in Ethics and Science.
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3 Comments | Accuracy, Democracy, Dissent, Free speech, Freedom - Political, History blogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
December 29, 2006
Olla podrida is a local, Spanish term for a Mulligan stew, for olio, etc.
Founding fathers and illegal immigrants — A new blog on the migration debate, cleverly titled Migration Debate, highlights a New York Times opposite-editorial page piece that details how many of our “founding fathers” took advantage of illegal immigration, or immigrated illegally themselves. William Hogeland wrote the piece, whom some of you will recognize as the author of The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the Frontier Rebels who challenged America’s newfound sovereignty. (Scribner, 2006)
Google’s amazing powers: Bad time to be speechless: Over at 31fps, Google.com/maps magical powers are explained: The author finds a store on Google maps, clicks a button, and Google first calls his phone, and then calls the store — go Google, and leave the dialing to Google. Star Trek wasn’t this good. Just be sure you’re over being speechless when the party at the other end answers.
Amazing cosmos: Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy lists his top 10 images from outer space for 2006. #1 is a doozy, but be sure you read the explanation Phil offers.
Fashionable extinction: Microecos explains how fashion wiped out a beautiful, unique bird, the huia, in New Zealand, a century ago. It’s a reminder of how stupid humans can be — a good exercise is in there somewhere for geography classes, or a general lecture on the effects of colonization.
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Leave a Comment » | Astronomy, Books, Economics, Education, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Geography - Physical, George Washington, Maps, Natural history, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 