Obama’s well-qualified cabinet: Conservatives hoaxed by “J. P. Morgan” chart that verifies prejudices

November 26, 2009

Barack Obama’s cabinet is highly qualified on almost every score.  It’s the first cabinet to feature someone who has already received a Nobel prize in the field (Teddy Roosevelt as head of his own cabinet excepted).  Obama pulled highly qualified people from a lot of important positions, from both major parties, and from across the nation.

Conservatives, religiously believing Obama’s administration cannot be allowed to succeed, erupted in bluster this past week when a chart mysteriously cited to an unfound (by me) “J. P. Morgan study” claimed Obama’s cabinet has less that 10% who have private sector experience.  [See updates at bottom of post.]

“No business people!” the bloggers splutter.  “However can the government function?”

Chart claiming to be from J. P. Morgan, hoaxing experience of Obama cabinet, underestimating by 7 times

Chart claimed by American Enterprise Institute to be from J. P. Morgan, hoaxing experience data of Obama cabinet, underestimating by 700%

Gullibles rarely ask good questions, so we don’t need to bother with an answer to the question, if it’s a stupid question.  And in order to determine whether it’s a stupid question, we ought to ask whether the chart has any resemblance to reality.

According to the White House website:

The Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments — the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General.

Six others have “cabinet-rank” status:  White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, OMB Director Peter Orzag, U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer.

Vice President, plus 15 executive department heads, plus six others:  22 people.

If only 10% had private sector experience, that would be 2.2 of them.  Each of the 22 people comprises about 4.5% of the cabinet.  Two of them with private experience would be 9% of the cabinet.  Three with private experience would reveal the chart to be in error.  Would it be possible to create a cabinet of 22 people and have only two of them with private experience?

The bullshit detectors in the bloggers’ minds should have been clanging like crazy when they saw that chart.

No one has cited any methodology for the chart, so I figure it was created on a napkin by interns for the American Enterprise Institute at lunch, and it took off before anyone could check the claims made for accuracy.  I’m a bit reluctant to blame it on J. P. Morgan, but maybe AEI can provide the interpleader to pin the blame on that private sector organization — which would be one more demonstration that private sector experience may not be all that AEI tries to crack it up to be.  Before counting, I guessed that Obama’s cabinet has more like 50% with private sector experience; it turns out to be more like 80%.  So the question now becomes, how and why did the chart originator discount real private-sector experience?

The “J. P. Morgan” chart from AEI is a hoax.  Here’s the cabinet, listed in succession order, with their private sector experience; members were listed from the White House website; biographical data were taken from Wikipedia, supplemented by official departmental biographies:

  • Vice President Joe Biden – Private experience:  Yes.  4.5% of the cabinet.  Biden’s father worked in the private sector his entire life — unsuccessfully for a critical period.  Biden attended a private university’s law school (Syracuse), and operated a successful-because-of-property-management law practice for three years before winning election to the U.S. Senate.  (I regard a campaign as a private business, too — and Biden’s first campaign was masterful entrepreneurship.)
  • Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – Private experience:  Yes, significant.  9% of the cabinet.  Extremely successful private practice lawyer in Arkansas for the Rose Law Firm, one of the “Top 100 Lawyers” in a classically dog-eat-dog business.
  • Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner – Private experience:  Yes, significant.  13.6% of the cabinet (The chart’s error is established in the first three people checked — surely no one bothered to make a serious count of the cabinet in compiling the chart.) Geithner traveled with world with his Ford Foundation-employed father.  He graduated from private universities, with an A.B. from Dartmouth and an M.A. in economics from Johns Hopkins.  Starting his career, he worked three years in the private sector with Kissinger Associates.  After significant positions at Treasury and State Departments, he again ventured into the private sector with the Council on Foreign Relations; from there he moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — in what is at worst a semi-public organization.  Running a Federal Reserve Branch is among the most intensive jobs one can have in private sector economics and management.   If an analyst at a bank named after J. P. Morgan didn’t understand that, one wonders just what the person does understand.
  • Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – Private sector experience:  Yes, at high levels.  18% of the cabinet.  Bob Gates spent a career with the Central Intelligence Agency, finally as Director of Central Intelligence, an executive level position with no equal in private enterprise.  He retired in 1993, and then worked in a variety of university positions, and joined several different corporate boards; in 1999 he was appointed interim Dean of the George W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, and was appointed President of Texas A&M in 2002, where he served until his appointment as Secretary of Defense in 2006.
  • Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  23% of the cabinet, total.  After a sterling career in the Justice Department, as a Ronald Reagan appointment to be a federal judge, as a U.S. Attorney, and again at the Justice Department, Holder spent eight years representing high profile private clients at Covington  &  Burling in Washington, D.C.  His clients included the National Football League, the giant pharmaceutical company Merck, and Chiquita Brands, a U.S. company with extensive international business.
  • Secretary of Interior Kenneth L. Salazar – Private sector experience: Yes.  27% of Obama cabinet.  Besides a distinguished career in government, as advisor and Cabinet Member with Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Salazar was a successful private-practice attorney from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1994 to 1998 when he won election as Colorado’s Attorney General.  As Senator, Salazar maintained a good voting record for a Republican business-supporting senator; Salazar is a Democrat.  Salazar’s family is in ranching, and he is usually listed as a “rancher from Colorado,” with life experience in the ranching business at least equal to that of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner.
  • Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  32% of Obama cabinet.  Vilsack spent 23 years in private practice as an attorney, 1975 to 1998, while holding not-full-time elective offices such as mayor and state representative.  He joined government as Governor of Iowa in 1998, and except for two years, has been in employed in government since then.
  • Secretary of Commerce Gary F. Locke – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  36% of Obama cabinet.  As near as I can determine, Locke was in private law practice from 1975 through his election as Executive in King County in 1993 (is that a full-time position?).  He was elected Governor of Washington in 1996.  After leaving office in 2005, he again worked in private practice with Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, until 2009.  22 years in private practice, three years as Executive of King County, eight years as Governor of Washington.
  • Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis – Private sector experience:  Yes, but I consider it insignificant.  36% of Obama cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  Solis’s father was a Teamster and union organizer who contracted lead poisoning on the job; her mother was an assembly line worker for Mattel Toys.  She overachieved in high school and ignored her counselor’s advice to avoid college, and earned degrees from Cal Poly-Pomona and USC.  She held a variety of posts in federal government before returning to California to work for education and win election to the California House and California Senate, and then to Congress.
  • Secretary of  Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  41% of Obama cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius worked in the private sector for 12 years, at least nine years as director and lobbyist for the Kansas Association for Justice (then Kansas Trial Lawyers Association).  One might understand why the American Enterprise Institute would not count as “business experience” a career built on reining in insurance companies, as Sebelius did as a lobbyist and then elected Kansas Insurance Commissioner.
  • Secretary of  Housing and Urban Development Shaun L.S. Donovan – Private sector experience:  Yes, only 4 years, but significant because it bugs AEI analysts so much.  45% of cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  With multiple degrees from Harvard University in architecture and public administration, Donovan was Deputy Assistant Secretary of HUD for Multifamily Housing during the Clinton Administration; and he was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).  In the private sector, he worked for the Community Preservation Corporation, a non-profit in New York City, and he worked for a while finding sources to lend to people to buy “affordable housing” in the city, a task perhaps equal to wringing blood from a block of granite.
  • Secretary of  Transportation Raymond L. LaHood – Private sector experience:  No (not significant); school teacher at Holy Family School in Peoria, Illinois.  [As a teacher, I’m not sure that teaching should count as government experience, but it’s not really private sector stuff, either.  Education isn’t as wasteful as for-profit groups.]  45% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Ironically, it is the Republican former Representative who pulls down the private sector experience percentage in the Obama cabinet.
  • Secretary of Energy Steven Chu – Private sector experience:  Yes, extremely significant.  50% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Chu worked at Bell Labs, where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work, from 1978 to 1987.  Having won a Nobel for private sector work, I think we can count his private sector experience as important.  Chu also headed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is seeded by a government contract to a university but must operate as a very highly-regulated business.  (I’ll wager Chu is counted as “no private sector experience,” which demonstrates the poverty of methodology of the so-called “J. P. Morgan” study AEI claims.)
  • Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  55% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Duncan earned Academic All-American honors in basketball at Harvard.  His private sector is among the more unusual of any cabinet member’s, and more competitive.  Duncan played professional basketball: “From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia with the Eastside Spectres of the [Australian] National Basketball League, and while there, worked with children who were wards of the state. He also played with the Rhode Island Gulls and tried out for the New Jersey Jammers.”  Since leaving basketball he’s worked in education, about four years in a private company aiming to improve education.
  • Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki – Private sector experience:  Yes, but to give AEI and “Morgan” a chance, we won’t count it.  55% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  Shinseki is a retired, four-star general in the army, a former Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  While Shinseki served on the boards of a half-dozen corporations, all of that service was in the six years between his official retirement and his appointment as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
  • Secretary of Homeland Security Janet A. Napolitano – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  59% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  After a brilliant turn in law school at the University of Virginia, and a clerking appointment with a federal judge, Napolitano joined the distinguished Phoenix firm Lewis & Roca, where she practiced privately for nine years before Bill Clinton appointed her U.S. Attorney for Arizona.  AEI probably doesn’t want to count her private sector experience because, among other irritations to them, she was the attorney-advisor to Prof. Anita Hill during her questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the issue of Clarence Thomas’s nomination to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
  • White House Chief of Staff Rahm I. Emanuel – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  64% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  Emanuel’s major private sector experience is short, but spectacular.  “After serving as an advisor to Bill Clinton, in 1998 Emanuel resigned from his position in the Clinton administration and became an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort), where he worked until 2002. In 1999, he became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office. Emanuel made $16.2 million in his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, according to Congressional disclosures. At Wasserstein Perella, he worked on eight deals, including the acquisition by Commonwealth Edison of Peco Energy and the purchase by GTCR Golder Rauner of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.”  J. P. Morgan and AEI wish that Emanuel had not had such smashing success is such a short time.
  • Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson – Private sector experience:  No, significant.  64% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Despite a brilliant career cleaning up environmental messes, with EPA and the New Jersey State government, Jackson has negligible private sector experience.  She was a brilliant student, valedictorian in high school and honors graduate in chemical engineering.
  • Office of Management & Budget Director Peter R. Orszag – Private sector experience:  Yes, short but significant.  68% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Orszag is the youngest member of the cabinet, but he had a brilliant academic career (Princeton, London School for Economics) and a series of tough assignments in the Clinton Administration.  During the Bush years he founded an economic consulting firm, and sold it, and worked with McKinsey and Company, mostly on health care financing (he’s a member of the National Institute of Medicine in the National Academies of Science).
  • U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Ronald Kirk – Private sector experience:  Yes, long and significant.  73% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Son of a postal worker, Ron Kirk used academic achievement to get through law school.  He practiced privately for 13 years, interspersed with a bit of political work, before being appointed Texas Secretary of State in 1994 — the office that most businesses have most of their state regulatory action with.  About a year later he ran for and won election as Mayor of Dallas, considered a major business post in Texas.  Re-elected by a huge margin in 1999, he resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in 2002.  After losing (to John Cornyn), Price took positions with Dallas and then Houston law firms representing big businesses, especially in government arenas.
  • U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice – Private sector experience:  Yes.  77% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Rice was a consultant with McKinsey and Co., sort of the ne plus ultra of private sectorness, for a while before beginning her climb to U.N Ambassador.
  • Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer – Private sector experience:  Yes, but academic.  We won’t count it to make AEI out to be less of a sucker.  77% of cabinet with private sector experience, 23% without significant private sector experience.  Dr. Romer’s chief appointments have been academic, and at a public university, though her education was entirely private.  A specialist in the Great Depression and economic data gathering, she’s highly considered by her colleagues, and is a past-president of the American Economic Association.

All totaled, Obama’s cabinet is one of the certifiably most brainy, most successful and most decorated of any president at any time.  His cabinet brings extensive and extremely successful private sector experience coupled with outstanding and considerable successful experience in government and elective politics.

AEI’s claim that the cabinet lacks private sector experience is astoundingly in error, with 77% of the 22 members showing private sector experience — according to the bizarre chart, putting Obama’s cabinet in the premiere levels of private sector experience.  The chart looks more and more like a hoax that AEI fell sucker to — and so did others (von Mises Institute, Wall Street Blips, League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Volokh Conspiracy, Econlib).

Others bitten by Barnum’s Law:

  • Coyote Blog — stepped right into the punch:  “Ever get that feeling like the Obama White House doesn’t have a clue as to what it takes to actually run a business, make investments, hire people, sell a product, etc?”
  • Say Anthing
  • [Update — when did this guy erupt?] The Daily Mush, mushing the name of the author here, among nearly almost everything else.

Important update:  Thanks to the comment of Jake, below, I found this article in Forbes, by J. P. Morgan Michael Cembalest, chief investment officer for J. P. Morgan. In notes to the article Cembalest reports on his methodology:

A variety of sources were consulted for this analysis, including the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. In the rankings, I did not include prior private-sector experience for the following positions: Postmaster General; Navy; War; Health, Education & Welfare; Veterans Affairs; and Homeland Security. In the rankings, private-sector experience at a law firm counts for a 33% score, which I think is very generous. My wife strongly suggested raising this to 50%, but I refused.

Cembalest doesn’t reveal much.  Does he include all cabinet-level posts outside the few he excluded?  Why did he exclude Navy and War, but not Defense?  Why would he exclude Homeland Security, with such obvious and extensive hits on private enterprise (think airlines and rail and ships)?  If no Homeland Security, why not exclude Transportation, too?

I’m particularly perturbed by his exclusion of lawyers.  If lawyers are excluded, why not investment bankers?  Lawyers are more directly engages in day-to-day competitive enterprise — and certainly most lawyers have more experience in hiring, firing, and as a commenter notes, “product placement” and advertising, than investment bankers.

In the end, Cembalest doesn’t provide enough details of his methdology, but we can see it’s a quick-and-very-dirty count, not much different from a SWAG.  I’m dying to see how Cembalest dealt with Energy Secretary Chu’s winning a Nobel from his work at Bell Labs, a bastion and symbol of private enterprise power and strength — or rather, how I suspect it was discounted in Cembalest’s counting.  And I wonder how his method dealt with the academic careers of George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and the law career of James P. Baker III.  [end of update]

Update #2, March 16, 2010: I failed to post this last fall, for which I owe an apology to you, Dear Reader, and to Michael Cembalest.

About a week after I posted this I got a late afternoon call from Michael Cembalest.  It was a courtesy call.  He said he was striking the chart and the post from his website and recalling the newsletter.  We had a pleasant discussion, he explaining that it was originally, as he had said in Forbes, a Thanksgiving dinner table conversation.  He wrote about it on a slow investment week, meant to be a humorous barb to thought.  The experience and outlook of cabinet secretaries is indeed a good topic of conversation (how different would history have been had Herbert Hoover had anyone other than the filthy rich Andrew Mellon as his Secretary of Treasury, someone who hurt with the Depression and might not have had the personal wealth to survive any downturn no matter how long).  Mr. Cembalest explained that he had intended to count only those secretaries with a dog in the jobs fight — so Sec. of State Clinton wouldn’t count, for example — but he agreed that any methodology should be more clear than he indicated, and not so dodgy as it had become in internet discussions.

At that point, he felt, any serious point was irretrievable.  So he took the post down.

I’ve left this one up because I think it had spread too far by that time to call it back.  See the stories of Mencken’s hoax about putting a bathtub in the White House, and you may understand my reasoning.

Astounding update, July 23, 2010: Neil Boortz spread the hoax on his blog this morning. There is no end to a hoax, once, it’s out of the bag.

Help the truth catch up to the hoax:

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Save

127 Comments | Barack Obama, Business, History, Hoaxes, Politics, President Obama, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Mau-mauing the gullibles: Sirkin on DDT (again)

November 26, 2009

The hard core uneducables who make of the hard knot at the center of the anti-science and anti-environmental movement just refuses to jettison their adored myths about science, regardless how many times those myths are shown to be false.

It’s a religious exercise with them, and their faith in error and bad applications of science won’t be shaken.

Have you ever read Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic & Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers? Claiming Ruckelshaus an enemy of Africans and Rachel Carson a mass murderer is the new Radical Chic, and constant writing about it the new Mau-mauing.

Natalie Sirkin writes screeds for newspapers in Connecticut, I understand from an odd blog that collects these misdeeds, Don Pesci’s Connecticut Commentary:  Red Notes from a Blue State.

(Pesci has a particular fetish for DDT myths, and Sirkin’s been there, too.  He’s hard-core — no amount of information can sway him.)

Sirkin’s latest screed is “Myths for Fun and Profit,” and includes as one of the myths DDT’s ban in the U.S.  Her complaint is badly worded, but from the brief and grossly wrong explanation, we can see she thinks that DDT shouldn’t have been banned, and that map and calendar challenged, she thinks the ban on using DDT on cotton in the U.S. in 1972 somehow led to a rise in malaria in Africa in the 1980s. (Mosquitoes don’t travel that far, generally, either across the ocean from the U.S. to Africa, nor in time, from 1972 to 1980, nor the other way around.)

Sirkin wrote:

8….DDT, the most wonderful chemical ever. “It is estimated that in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable,” concluded the National Academy of Sciences in 1971, the year before EPA head William Ruckelshaus banned it. Thanks to Ruckelshaus, Rachel Carson, environmentalist extremists, and the WHO, millions of Africans including children are dying or disabled today.

Why, these irrational policy errors?

So I responded:

Banning DDT from agricultural use was an extremely rational act, as vouched for by the summary judgment against the DDT manufacturers in both of the cases brought against EPA for the ban, and as vouched for by the removal of the bald eagle and brown pelican from the Endangered Species List.

Sirkin wrote:  “DDT, the most wonderful chemical ever. ‘It is estimated that in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable,’ concluded the National Academy of Sciences in 1971, the year before EPA head William Ruckelshaus banned it.”

EPA relabeled DDT in 1972, not 1971, effectively banning the use of DDT on cotton.  Under that rule, DDT could be available to fight malaria in the U.S., and DDT was manufactured in the U.S. for export to anyone who wished to use it.  There has never been a ban on using DDT to fight malaria.

But DDT ceased to work well against malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the 1960s.  Africans are not stupid.  Had DDT been a panacea, I’m sure they would have used it.

But while I worry about your implicit denigration of Africans and Asians in suggesting they are somehow incapable of deciding for themselves to use an effective weapon against disease, I am more concerned at your erroneous characterization of DDT’s value.  The National Academy of Sciences made an editing error, so part of your error is understandable.  DDT was never credited with saving 500 million lives.  During the entire time DDT has been available to fight malaria, from 1946 to today, the death rate worldwide from malaria has never exceeded 4 million a year, and since the 1960s the death rate has been about a million year.  At 4 million deaths per year, to save 500 million lives, DDT would have had to have been used for 125 years prior to now.  Insecticidal properties of the stuff were discovered only in 1939, 70 years ago.

At about a million deaths per year, to save 500 million lives, DDT would have had to have been used for 500 years.

Clearly there was an error in math, or confusion in citations.  About 500 million people are afflicted with malaria annually, noted earlier in that NAS book, which is where I think the 500 million figure came from.

But let’s leave that aside for a moment.  That 1970 publication by the National Academy of Sciences was an evaluation of chemicals in the environment.  That sentence crediting DDT with saving so many lives, erroneous as it was, was in a call to ban DDT as quickly as possible, and to increase research to find alternatives to DDT in order to get DDT use completely stopped.

NAS recognized the value of DDT, but said it was too dangerous to keep using.

Don’t cite NAS’s credit to DDT without noting they said we must stop using it, because its dangers outweigh the benefits.

You can find a more thorough discussion of the NAS report at this blog. [You should go see, Dear Reader — neither Sirkin nor Pesci will likely ever bother.]

Sirkin wrote:
“Thanks to Ruckelshaus, Rachel Carson, environmentalist extremists, and the WHO, millions of Africans including children are dying or disabled today.”

With the great assistance of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and continued efforts of the World Health Organization, several African nations have cut malaria rates by 50% to 85% with the use of bednets and “integrated vector management” (IVM), usually known as integrated pest management (IPM) in the U.S.

Anyone who reads Carson’s astoundingly accurate book knows that she did not call for a ban on DDT, but instead called for the use of an integrated program of pest management.  Had we listened to Rachel Carson in 1962, we could have saved several million children from death, in Africa, from malaria alone.  It is scurrilous, calumnous, and inaccurate to the point of sin to blame Rachel Carson for deaths caused by failure to listen to her and heed her words.

Ruckelshaus acted with full knowledge of the National Academy of Science’s calling for an end to DDT use due to its harms, known and then unknown.  It is foolish to blame people for acting with hard evidence and careful, rational thought.  It’s particularly ungraceful to then accuse them of acting irrationally.

I doubt that either Pesci or Sirkin will ever change their tune.  They’d have to concede that science works, that scientists are not all evil, and that sometimes environmentalists, and even liberals, get things right.  More importantly, they’d have to concede they erred — and that would be like Baum’s Wicked Witch of the West taking a shower.

4 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Cost of Green, DDT, Green Politics, History, History of Science, Rachel Carson, Reason | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

150 years ago, a book that changed history: Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

November 25, 2009

150 years ago today Charles Darwin’s “big book,” On the Origin of Species, was first published.  The entire publication run of more than a thousand copies sold out within a few days, making it a certified best-seller of its day.

A rare copy of the first edition, found in the loo of an old house, sold at auction at Christie’s for US$172,000.

Olivia Judson’s already got her day-after blog post up at the New York Times site, talking about a key issue in evolution:  Extinction.  She already blogged on the importance of the Big Book.

And the “Origin” changed everything. Before the “Origin,” the diversity of life could only be catalogued and described; afterwards, it could be explained and understood. Before the “Origin,” species were generally seen as fixed entities, the special creations of a deity; afterwards, they became connected together on a great family tree that stretches back, across billions of years, to the dawn of life. Perhaps most importantly, the “Origin” changed our view of ourselves. It made us as much a part of nature as hummingbirds and bumblebees (or humble-bees, as Darwin called them); we, too, acquired a family tree with a host of remarkable and distinguished ancestors.

The reason the “Origin” was so powerful, compelling and persuasive, the reason Darwin succeeded while his predecessors failed, is that in it he does not just describe how evolution by natural selection works. He presents an enormous body of evidence culled from every field of biology then known. He discusses subjects as diverse as pigeon breeding in Ancient Egypt, the rudimentary eyes of cave fish, the nest-building instincts of honeybees, the evolving size of gooseberries (they’ve been getting bigger), wingless beetles on the island of Madeira and algae in New Zealand. One moment, he’s considering fossil animals like brachiopods (which had hinged shells like clams, but with a different axis of symmetry); the next, he’s discussing the accessibility of nectar in clover flowers to different species of bee.

At the same time, he uses every form of evidence at his disposal: he observes, argues, compares, infers and describes the results of experiments he has read about, or in many cases, personally conducted. For example, one of Darwin’s observations is that the inhabitants of islands resemble — but differ subtly from — those of the nearest continents. So: birds and bushes on islands off the coast of South America resemble South American birds and bushes; islands near Africa are populated by recognizably African forms.

Of course you –you cognescenti, you — know Judson is the wit behind Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, a thoroughly delightful, funny and scientifically accurate book.  Which brings to my mind this question:  Why are scientists, and especially evolutionary scientists, so funny and charming, in stark contrast to the dull proles of creationism?

And, were he not ill at the time, can you imagine what a fantastic dinner guest Charles Darwin himself would be?

Darwin's hand-drawn "tree of life"

Darwin's hand-drawn "tree of life"

Meanwhile, at PBS, NOVA already featured “Darwin’s Darkest Hour” earlier this year.  NOVA research Gaia Remerowski alerts us to a coming production, “What Darwin Never Knew,” featuring progress made in evolutionary development, “evo-devo.”   Science marches on.

Remerowski illustrated her post with Darwin’s quick, hand drawing of a “tree of life,” a drawing that has become iconic in biology circles — like the one to your right.  This one comes from the website of “Speaking of Faith,” another PBS production that featured Darwin earlier this year.  SOF offered an online tour of some of the work of Darwin, too — other drawings from Darwin’s own hand.  Nice exhibit.

Our country’s advocates for good science education, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) carried Origin Day greetings and a rundown of a dozen projects commemorating the 150th year of the book, and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.

Happy Origin Day, indeed.

5 Comments | Books, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Education, Evolution, Higher education, Historic documents, History, History blogs, History museums, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Rap at the White House: Alexander Hamilton

November 22, 2009

An Obama guest, Lin-Manuel Miranda, pushes the envelope on gangsta rap, and history teaching:

You can’t use that in the classroom, teachers?  Why not?

More:

Wikipedia notes of Miranda:

He is working on a hip-hop album based upon the life of Alexander Hamilton, entitled The Hamilton Mixtape.[5] He recently performed “The Hamilton Mixtape” at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009. Accompanied by Alex Lacamoire. [12]

Tip of the old scrub brush to Slashdot.


Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

4 Comments | 1787, A Good Story, America's founding, Economics, History, History and art, History Methods and Tools, Music, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Why more kids should study world history, harder

November 20, 2009

Jon Taplin explains why knowing world history is valuable. The sad thing is that, of course, the story that makes his reason doesn’t appear in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills list for world history, nor in any other social studies course.

Now that the Texas State Board of Education has taken off the cloak of education and made it clear that social studies in Texas is considered a political free-fire zone, and that they plan to vitiate anything but the propaganda value for the Republican Party, Taplin’s piece has all the more poignance.

The Renaissance, and Florence, were more than just a minor question on the TAKS test.  Santayana’s Ghost weeps bitterly.

Why isn’t Jon Taplin’s blog required reading in more places, by more people in government and politics?  We know why the Texas State School Board doesn’t want anyone to read it — that alone should make people fight to see what Taplin says.

Promote this idea in your own study group:

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

1 Comment | Education, Education quality, History, Renaissance, Santayana's ghost, Social Studies, State school boards, Taxes, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, War, War on Education, World history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Palin: Ignore the woman abusing the flag and look at those gams!

November 18, 2009

Newsweek features Sarah Palin on the cover this week, a couple of weeks after featuring Al Gore.  I thought the Gore cover was interesting, but could be interpreted to make him look sinister.

Palin on the cover of Newsweek

Sexist? Or sac-patriotic?

Palin, on the other hand, is featured in a full photo she posed for Runners World last year.  A flattering photo, it also features a U.S. flag, which we’ll get back to in a moment.

Palin complains that the cover is “sexist.”

Yahoo! News has the story, featuring Palin’s Facebook complaint.

“The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness — a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention — even if out of context.

But look at the cover.  Newsweek brands Palin as a problem — for Republicans. Is the sexism charge designed to divert attention from what Newsweek is saying, editorially?

Look at the display of the flag.  Clearly out of flag code on all scores, it appears as if she’s using the flag much as an athletic towel.  Now think of the rage the right worked up to when candidate Obama didn’t wear a flag lapel pin.  Can you imagine the rage had any Democrat posed for a picture, leaning on the flag like that?

The photo reveals Palin and her handlers as ill-informed on the flag code, and willing to do almost anything to get a camera.  I find it interesting that now, more than a year after she posed for the picture, she’s concerned about her showing of leg and not about the political issues raised by Newsweek.

Almost no one worries about the disrespect for the U.S. flag.

_____________

Update: Good commentary at Obsidian Wings — and note the first five or so comments.  Smart readers there!  Much the same at Majikthise.

2 Comments | Flag etiquette, History, Patriotism, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Brave 10-year-old Arkansas boy refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance, on principle

November 17, 2009

Adults worry about peer pressure.  Kids can goad other kids into doing stupid things, dangerous things, illegal things, and immoral things.

Pressure from adults on kids might be just as strong.

What about a 10-year-old kid who stands up to peer pressure, and stands for principle against adults who use all sorts of inducements to get him to do something he believes is wrong?

I offer a salute to Will Phillips of  West Fork School District, in Washington County, Arkansas.

Will believes homosexuals in America are not beneficiaries of  liberty and justice for all.  Will now refuses to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance for that reason.

It’s probably not what I’d advise the young man to do to protest, but he has every right.  He’s thought it through, which may not be said for the substitute teacher and the school administrator who tried to pressure him into giving up on his principles.

In the Arkansas Times, David Koon writes the story:

A boy and his flag

Why Will won’t pledge.

David Koon
Updated: 11/5/2009

WILL PHILLIPS: Freedom lover.

Will Phillips, freedom lover, in Arkansas (Arkansas Times photo)

Will Phillips isn’t like other boys his age.

For one thing, he’s smart. Scary smart. A student in the West Fork School District in Washington County, he skipped a grade this year, going directly from the third to the fifth. When his family goes for a drive, discussions are much more apt to be about Teddy Roosevelt and terraforming Mars than they are about Spongebob Squarepants and what’s playing on Radio Disney.

It was during one of those drives that the discussion turned to the pledge of allegiance and what it means. Laura Phillips is Will’s mother. “Yes, my son is 10,” she said. “But he’s probably more aware of the meaning of the pledge than a lot of adults. He’s not just doing it rote recitation. We raised him to be aware of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s fair.”

Will’s family has a number of gay friends. In recent years, Laura Phillips said, they’ve been trying to be a straight ally to the gay community, going to the pride parades and standing up for the rights of their gay and lesbian neighbors. They’ve been especially dismayed by the effort to take away the rights of homosexuals – the right to marry, and the right to adopt. Given that, Will immediately saw a problem with the pledge of allegiance.

“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”

After asking his parents whether it was against the law not to stand for the pledge, Will decided to do something. On Monday, Oct. 5, when the other kids in his class stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance, he remained sitting down. The class had a substitute teacher that week, a retired educator from the district, who knew Will’s mother and grandmother. Though the substitute tried to make him stand up, he respectfully refused. He did it again the next day, and the next day. Each day, the substitute got a little more cross with him. On Thursday, it finally came to a head. The teacher, Will said, told him that she knew his mother and grandmother, and they would want him to stand and say the pledge.

“She got a lot more angry and raised her voice and brought my mom and my grandma up,” Will said. “I was fuming and was too furious to really pay attention to what she was saying. After a few minutes, I said, ‘With all due respect, ma’am, you can go jump off a bridge.’ ”

Will was sent to the office, where he was given an assignment to look up information about the flag and what it represents. Meanwhile, the principal called his mother.

“She said we have to talk about Will, because he told a sub to jump off a bridge,” Laura Phillips said. “My first response was: Why? He’s not just going to say this because he doesn’t want to do his math work.”

Eventually, Phillips said, the principal told her that the altercation was over Will’s refusal to stand for the pledge of allegiance, and admitted that it was Will’s right not to stand. Given that, Laura Phillips asked the principal when they could expect an apology from the teacher. “She said, ‘Well I don’t think that’s necessary at this point,’ ” Phillips said.

After Phillips put a post on the instant-blogging site twitter.com about the incident, several of her friends got angry and alerted the news media. Meanwhile, Will Phillips still refuses to stand during the pledge of allegiance. Though many of his friends at school have told him they support his decision, those who don’t have been unkind, and louder.

“They [the kids who don’t support him] are much more crazy, and out of control and vocal about it than supporters are.”

Given that his protest is over the rights of gays and lesbians, the taunts have taken a predictable bent. “In the lunchroom and in the hallway, they’ve been making comments and doing pranks, and calling me gay,” he said. “It’s always the same people, walking up and calling me a gaywad.”

Even so, Will said that he can’t foresee anything in the near future that will make him stand for the pledge. To help him deal with the peer pressure, his parents have printed off posts in his support on blogs and websites. “We’ve told him that people here might not support you, but we’ve shown him there are people all over that support you,” Phillips said. “It’s really frustrating to him that people are being so immature.”

At the end of our interview, I ask young Will a question that might be a civics test nightmare for your average 10-year-old. Will’s answer, though, is good enough — simple enough, true enough — to give me a little rush of goose pimples.  What does being an American mean?

“Freedom of speech,” Will says, without even stopping to think. “The freedom to disagree. That’s what I think pretty much being an American represents.”

Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson smiles.

12 Comments | Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, History, Justice, Patriotism, Pledge to the flag | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chess games of the rich and famous: Ben Franklin and Lady Howe

November 17, 2009

Ben Franklin plays chess with Lady Howe, 1867 painting by Edward Harrison May

"Lady Howe mates Ben Franklin," 1867 painting by Edward Harrison May - public domain

Resources:

1 Comment | Ben Franklin, Chess, History | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationist: Murdering Jews may be preferable to lying to prevent the murder

November 14, 2009

I’m cutting the monster a lot of slack with the headline.

P. Z. Myers publicized the e-mail exchange involving Bodie Hodge, a minor deity at the anti-science, creationist organization Answers in Genesis (AiG).  Myers was nice to the guy, contrary to the usual creationist cartoon of Myers as somehow immoral for being a non-worshipper of gods.  Well, he was nicer than I would have been.  But Myers expects Christians to exhibit no sense of shame, no common sense, and twisted morality.  I expect bettter of them.

A reader posed that age-old question to Hodge:  Is the Christian rule against lying so strong that a Christian should tell Nazi troops where Jewish families are hiding?  Hodge weasels later by saying he hopes he never has to make such a choice, and that he really doesn’t know how he’d act in that situation.  But this comes only after he says that telling  a lie to Nazis to save Jews will get one burned in hell.  And then he goes on to note it’s better to be in good with God than to act morally.

In other words, better to become an accomplice in the murder of Jews than to stand up against murderers.

I don’t get how these charlatans of religion, reason to such a point.

What would Jesus do?  We know.  When the crowd was threatening to stone to death a woman guilty of adultery and she sought refuge with Jesus, Jesus stood up to the mob and saved her life.  Just execution of Biblical law or shelter the accused, Jesus stood against the murder, even murder sanctioned by the religious rules of the community.

We also know that scripture endorses deception from time to time.  You know these AiG clowns are charlatans when they say stupid stuff like this.  Hodge tries to explain away another case of deception by inventing a scenario not found in scripture in which the lie doesn’t get told.

He’s forgotten the story of Jacob and Esau, and how Jacob and his mother conpsired to deceive Isaac in order to steal away Esau’s birthright (Esau and Jacob were twins, by the way).  Jacob got away with the deed, was then blessed by God.  He took a new name:  Israel.  He lived on to be the seed of Judaism, the religion Jesus followed and the foundation of Christianity.

To AiG, it appears that scripture is just a dusty old book, except when they can twist it to support their bigotry.  Here’s irony for you:  The story of Jacob is in Genesis.  You know, as in “Answers in Genesis.”  They don’t even know their own namesake book!

Here in America, as a nation we overcame that morality-or-religion problem with Huck Finn.  The ill-educated young teen, an absentee to grammar, faces the moral decision as he floats down the Mississippi with Jim, an escaped slave who has saved Huck’s life and is in other ways a very good friend.  Huck notes that the preachers are all agreed that Huck’s moral duty is to turn Jim in as an escaped slave, to condemn Jim to a continued life of slavery, should Jim survive the lashing.  Huck Finn puts the dilemma squarely:  Whether to obey God and turn in Jim to the authorities, or to burn in hell and let Jim live the life of a free man.  Huck agonizes, but decides:  He’ll burn in hell rather than give away his friend.

Myers wrote:

As a non-Bible believing amoral godless atheist, my first thought was that this is trivial: you lie your pants off. The ‘crime’ of telling a lie pales into insignificance against the crime of enabling the death of fellow human beings.

According to Bodie Hodge of AiG, though, I’m wrong. The good Christian should reject lies, Satan’s tools, in all circumstances, and should immediately ‘fess up the location of the Jews. He backs it up with Bible quotes, too.

If we love God, we should obey Him (John 14:15). To love God first means to obey Him first–before looking at our neighbor. So, is the greater good trusting God when He says not to lie or trusting in our fallible, sinful minds about the uncertain future?

Consider this carefully. In the situation of a Nazi beating on the door, we have assumed a lie would save a life, but really we don’t know. So, one would be opting to lie and disobey God without the certainty of saving a life–keeping in mind that all are ultimately condemned to die physically. Besides, whether one lied or not may not have stopped the Nazi solders from searching the house anyway.

As Christians, we need to keep in mind that Jesus Christ reigns. All authority has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18), and He sits on the throne of God at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33; Hebrews 8:1). Nothing can happen without His say. Even Satan could not touch Peter without Christ’s approval (Luke 22:31). Regardless, if one were to lie or not, Jesus Christ is in control of timing every person’s life and able to discern our motives. It is not for us to worry over what might become, but rather to place our faith and obedience in Christ and to let Him do the reigning. For we do not know the future, whereas God has been telling the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).

Gosh. I never thought of it that way. So…all those Christians who sheltered Jews during WWII are actually burning in hell right now for their sinful wickedness? That is so counterintuitive, it must be true!

One more time we should side with morality, and against creationist distortions of Christianity and morality.

With all the learning they get at that reeking cesspool the creationism museum, you’d think they could demonstrate the moral fiber of a tobacco-chewing, food-stealing, school-cutting runaway teen, Huckleberry Finn.

Full AiG post below the fold (I expect them to strike it down when they rethink; let all Christians pray to God they do rethink).

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Read the rest of this entry »

33 Comments | Books, Creationism, History, Holocaust, Human Rights, Racism, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Who are those Boy Scouts in 1943?

November 13, 2009

A posed photograph:  Three Boy Scouts, from at least two different units, holding a poster Scouts were distributing about international cooperation in World War II.  They are saluting, and behind them rises the dome of the U.S. Capitol on a brilliantly sunny day.

Boy Scouts at the Capitol, 1943? - Library of Congress image

Caption from the U.S. Senate Historical Office: "Boy Scouts aid the war effort by delivering posters that encourage a united fight for freedom, ca.1943. credit: Library of Congress"

1943?  Who were the Scouts?

The photo is online in the collection of the U.S. Senate Historical Office (a good source of images, by the way).

I just wondered, who are those Scouts, and where are they today?

Boy Scouts assisted war efforts in a lot of ways in a lot of American cities, towns and villages.  Affiliates at the Tom Harbin Scout Museum at Camp Wisdom in Dallas (Circle 10 Council) have papers documenting and detailing massive scrap and paper drives, and a lot of other activities we probably wouldn’t let Scouts get into today.

The three Scouts in the photo wear what appears to be two different neckerchiefs, suggesting they come from at least two different troops or other units.  All three wear the uniform of the Boy Scouts of America, but two of the three look as though they may be immigrants or children of immigrants.

The date given is a “circa 1943.”  But the poster plugs a “United Nations” — could it have been as late as 1945 or 1946 and the official organizing of the United Nations?

What do you think?  What do you know?

Update: Wikimedia puts the date of the poster as 1941.  Shorpy says the photo is 1943:

“Washington, 1943. “United Nations Fight for Freedom: Colored, white and Chinese Boy Scouts in front of Capitol. They help out by delivering posters to help the war effort.” View full size. 4×5 Kodachrome transparency by John Rous for the Office of War Information. What photo expert out there can tell us about the numbers on these Kodachromes — how and at what point in the manufacturing/ exposure/ developing process they were made, and what they signify.

All those details and not the names of the Scouts?  In comments at Shorpy we also see that the temporary patch for the Scout on the left is for a 1942 campout.  So we know the photo was later than 1941.  The community patch for the Scout on the right says Washington where the city patch should be, with no state patch (if they had separate patches then).  So it’s probably a Washington, D.C. unit — and it’s Troop 11.  Anybody from National Capital Council ever read this site?  Were all three of these Scouts from Troop 11?

I have found, but cannot yet examine, another photo from the same roll of film, showing just the Scout in the middle.

Update 2: This may identify one of the Scouts, with an astounding story:

1941, Boy Scout, poster urging water saving, Anderson Grimes

Caption from CityDesk.net: "July 1941. Local Boy Scout Anderson Grimes in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., holding a copy of a WPA poster designed for the city’s landmark water conservation program."

That solo Scout is clearly the same one in the first photo, so we have one name:  Anderson Grimes.

But the entire story from CityDesk.net is more amazing, if true:

July 1941. Local Boy Scout Anderson Grimes in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., holding a copy of a WPA poster designed for the city’s landmark water conservation program. Shortly after this photo was taken, he was to present the poster to local congressman Harford Collins in a brief ceremony. Tragically, Grimes, along with several local reporters and congressional aides, instead found Senator Collins slumped over his desk, dead from a heart attack.

Thirty years later, Grimes ended up serving the same seat in Congress for four terms. He did not die in office.
– RJ White

If true?  I can’t find a listing for a Sen. Harford Collins in the Congressional biography pages, nor for any Member in either house named Anderson Grimes.

More mystery.  Is the Scout even named Anderson Grimes?

Okay, after j. a. higginbotham wrote in, I finally got it:  CityDesk.net is a satire site.  They wrote a phony story to accompany the photograph.

That’s right:  I got hoaxed.

Still looking for information on the Scouts and their troop(s).

Update, November 15: Is the water conservation poster in the version above a PhotoShop addition?  Here’s a photo held by the Library of Congress:

Boy Scout after 1942 showing posters Scouts distributed; photo by John Rous, Library of Congress collection

From Library of Congress: "United Nations Fight for Freedom: Boy Scout in front of Capitol. They help out by delivering posters to help the war effort"

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

11 Comments | 1941-1945, Boy Scouts of America, History, History images, Hoaxes, photography, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

50 U.S. Senators missing — can you help find them?

November 13, 2009

No, not current senators — don’t get your ignoble hopes up.

With more than 40,000 photographs and other images, the Senate Historical Office has images of almost all people who have served as members of the U.S. Senate.  5o members are completely absent from the Senate collection, however.

Got any idea where to find images of these guys?  This comes from the Senate Historical Office:

Senators Not Represented in Senate Historical Office Photo Collection

The Senate Historical Office maintains a collection of more than 40,000 still pictures, slides, and negatives. The collection includes photographs and illustrations of most former senators, but to date no photo or other illustration of about fifty members has been found. Below is a list (by state) of U.S. Senators for whom we have no image in our collection. If you have an image, or information that may lead us to an image, please contact the Senate’s photo historian.

__________________________

Alabama: – 2
William Kelly, 1822-1825
John Williams Walker, 1819-1822

Connecticut: – 2
Thaddeus  Betts, 1839-1840
Perry Smith, 1837-1843

Delaware: – 1
Outerbridge Horsey, 1810-1821

Georgia: – 5
William Bellinger Bulloch, 1813-1813
Thomas Willis Cobb, 1824-1828
Alfred Cuthbert, 1835-1843
James Gunn, 1789-1801
Josiah Tattnall, 1796-1799

Kentucky – 1
George Walker, 1814-1814

Louisiana – 3
Eligius Fromentin, 1813-1819
Allan Bowie Magruder, 1812-1813
Robert Carter Nicholas, 1836-1841

Massachusetts – 1
Eli Porter Ashmun, 1816-1818

Maryland – 6
John Henry, 1789-1797
Robert Henry Goldsborough, 1813-1819, 1835-1836
James Lloyd, 1797-1800
William Dunhurst Merrick, 1838-1845
John Selby Spence, 1836-1840
David Stewart, 1849-1850

Mississippi – 4
Robert Huntington Adams, 1830-1830
John Black, 1832-1838
Joseph Williams Chalmers, 1845-1847

New Hampshire – 2
Charles Cutts, 1810-1813
Nahum Parker, 1807-1810

New Jersey: – 3
Jonathan Elmer, 1789-1791
Aaron Kitchell, 1805-1809
James Jefferson Wilson, 1815-1821

New York – 1
Obadiah German, 1809-1815

North Carolina – 4
Timothy Bloodworth, 1795-1801
Jesse Franklin, 1799-1805, 1807-1813
Francis Locke, 1814-1815
James Turner, 1805-1816

Ohio – 3
Stanley Griswold, 1809-1809
Joseph Kerr, 1814-1815
John Smith, 1803-1808

Pennsylvania – 1
Samuel Maclay, 1803-1809

Rhode Island – 7
Nathan Dixon, Sr., 1839-1842
Benjamin Howland, 1804-1809
Henry Frederick Lippitt, 1911-1917
Francis Malbone, 1809-1809
Samuel John Potter, 1803-1804
Joseph Stanton, Jr., 1790-1793
William Sprague, 1842-1844

South Carolina – 1
John Hunter, 1796-1798

Tennessee – 3
Daniel Smith, 1798-1799, 1805-1809
Jesse Wharton, 1814-1815
Jenkin Whiteside, 1809-1811

Vermont – 4
Dudley Chase, 1813-1817, 1825-1831
Nathaniel Chipman, 1797-1803
Jonathan Robinson, 1807-1815
Israel Smith, 1803-1807

_________________________

You just know that somewhere out there, a local museum has a painting of one of these guys.  Or, someone has a painting or drawing of an old-timey guy hanging over a fireplace, a family heirloom that features one of these guys.  I mean, how could a guy like Outerbridge Horsey fail to inspire an artist somewhere?

Do you know of one?  Contact the Senate Historical Office, and let us know here, too.

1 Comment | Biography, History, History and art, History images, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fly your flag today: Veterans Day 2009

November 11, 2009

Fly your U.S. flag today — thank a veteran.  We have a lot to thank veterans for, and veterans need a little more appreciation today.

Veterans Day Poster, 2009, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

US Veterans Administration tells the history of celebrating Veterans Day on November 11:

World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: “To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…”

The original concept for the celebration was for a day observed with parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 a.m.

The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday—a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as “Armistice Day.” Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in the Nation’s history; after American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.” With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

Later that same year, on October 8th, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first “Veterans Day Proclamation” which stated: “In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans’ organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose. Toward this end, I am designating the Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs as Chairman of a Veterans Day National Committee, which shall include such other persons as the Chairman may select, and which will coordinate at the national level necessary planning for the observance. I am also requesting the heads of all departments and agencies of the Executive branch of the Government to assist the National Committee in every way possible.”

  • Click here for the 2007 poster from the Veterans Administration, or for posters dating back to 1978.
  • Veterans Day Teacher Resource Kit, for lesson plans and activities
    • veteransday09 Google

    Google's 2009 tribute to Veterans Day

    Remind others to fly their flags, too:

    Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

    5 Comments | Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History, Holidays, veterans | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    20 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell – reverse domino effect

    November 9, 2009

    High school sophomores in Texas study world history, and juniors study U.S. history. At 16 and 17 years old, they have difficulty figuring out the fuss over the Berlin Wall. It’s just pictures in their textbook.

    The Wall was already three or four years gone when they were born. They don’t remember living with the Soviet Union at all — it’s been Russia to them for their entire lives.

    I have some hopes that the celebrations set for this week will aid their understanding, on the 20th anniversary of the breaching and destruction of the wall.

    Dominoes set for celebration of the Berlin Wall's destruction. AP photo by Herbert Knosowski, via Canadian Broadcast System

    Caption from CBC: "Dominoes are placed where the Berlin Wall once stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in the German capital. (Herbert Knosowski/Associated Press)"

    An enormous line of giant dominoes is set up along the line where the old wall stood — to be toppled on November 9, the anniversary of the official breaching of the wall.

    It’s the “domino theory” in reverse.

    About 1,000 plastic foam dominoes will fall to the ground Monday along the route where the Berlin Wall once stood to mark the 20th anniversary of the crumbling of the Cold War barrier.

    The 2.3-metre-high blocks, painted by schoolchildren, stretch for 1.5 kilometres in a path near the Brandenburg Gate and the German parliament.

    Former Polish leader Lech Walesa, whose pro-democracy movement Solidarity played a key role in ending communism in Eastern Europe, will tip the first domino at 8 p.m. local time.

    I made one visit to the wall, late on a night in 1988.  American Airlines explored the possibility of taking over the service authorized from Munich to Berlin.  Soviet and East German rules required passenger flights to stay at a very uncomfortable 10,000 feet.  Pan Am had the route, but Pan Am was in trouble.  We spent a day with Berlin airport authorities and real estate agents trying to figure out how to set up a reservations office and other ground facilities.  European airports tended to force foreign carriers to share gate facilities, which was a problem, and we devoted a lot of time to gathering data for computer lines.

    But then, after a smashing dinner of sausage and German-style potatoes in a great, small Berlin pub, we talked our taxi driver into giving us a tour of the wall.  He drove a spot near the Brandenburg gate, and there on a chain link fence keeping westerners from the wall were eight fresh wreaths.  Eight people had died trying to cross from East Berlin to West Berlin in the previous six months.  One wreath for each death.

    Just over a year later, the Berlin Wall itself would be gone.

    West Berlin acted much like a normal, western European city.  But the wall was there as a constant reminder of the oppression on the other side, a dull fog to constantly dim even the sunniest day.

    Old posts on the Berlin Wall here at the bathtub are suddenly popular — usually they get a lot of hits after March when U.S. schools get to the post-World War II era, the Cold War and the Berlin airlift.  I imagine the current popularity has something to do with the anniversary.

    I hope somebody has some great video of the dominoes toppling.

    Dominoes acerbicly note the irony:  While the U.S. feared nations would fall under communism in a “domino effect,” especially in Southeast Asia (Indochina), communism broke up in a domino effect, as one communist-dominated country after another found freedom near the end of the Cold War.  Why has no one done a serious essay on the domino effect of freedom?

    More news and resources:

    Famous sign warning visitors leaving West Berlin

    A sign of old times, now unneeded

    Viral dominoes: Help spread the news:

    Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

    2 Comments | Berlin Wall, Capitalism, Cold War, Communism, Europe, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, History, History images, Landmarks | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    What books and papers literally turned history around?

    November 6, 2009

    Debating the effects  of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring got me wondering about the true influence of that book.  That quickly turned into wondering about the true influence of other writings, books and papers that might be credited with having turned around history in a given field, or in the United States (I’m focusing on U.S. history this year since that’s what I’m teaching).

    What books and writings — not events, not inventions — literally changed U.S. history?

    I have a quick list, not in chronological order, nor any other order, really:

    1. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
    2. “Common Sense,” Tom Paine’s broadside
    3. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
    4. Federalist Papers and Antifederalist Papers
    5. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriett Beecher Stowe
    6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
    7. On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
    8. Perhaps The Bible, at least after 1880 during the rise of fundamentalism
    9. Einstein’s five papers in 1905 (which led to a cascade of events to nuclear weapons, and more)
    10. John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory on Employment, Interest and Money (or would his Treatise on Money be the one to look at?)
    11. Ludwig von Mises (which writing?)
    12. Crick’s and Watson’s paper on DNA in 1953
    13. Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
    14. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” in the way it recast the Declaration of Independence

    What about Profiles in Courage? Did it have so much influence?  Any influence at all?

    I didn’t include Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I wonder if it should be there.  I regard it as the novel in which America came of age, when Huck decides he’ll go ahead and burn in hell by not turning Jim in as an escaped slave, because Jim is a man and a good friend.  (I don’t think a discussion of the validity of Huck’s religious beliefs gets at the issue here, where he does what is right assuming bad consequences, but maybe that’s a greater influence later on.)

    Oh, surely I’ve overlooked some very important contribution by someone.  De Tocqueville perhaps?  Were there other books that were greatly influential in their time, that we now generally don’t consider?  Ida Tarbell’s work, perhaps?  Did Edwin Hubble have a fundamental publication we can point to?  How about Alpher, Herman and Gamow and Big Bang?

    A follow-on question might be music, plays and movies that had similar results —  not sure of any that qualify, though I wonder about the influence of “Show Boat” in the campaign for desegregation and civil rights, and I wonder about the influence of “Our Town” on our view of civic government and small town life especially given that so many thousands of people participated in local and school productions of the thing over the years.  “Hair!?”

    I’m looking for sources to use to provide genuine light to a high school student in U.S. history.  Some of these sources we touch on, but others are completely ignored in all current U.S. history texts for public schools.

    What do you think?

    27 Comments | Books, History, Turning Points | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Surely we’ve found everything by now

    November 4, 2009

    Well, no, we haven’t.  Nice little post by a photographer urging people to go look to see what they can find, with a brilliantly concise set of arguments about big things discovered just in the past few years.

    Nice photos, too — go see.

    4 Comments | Adventure, Education, Explorers and Exploration, Geography - Physical, History, photography, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    « Previous Entries
    Next Entries »