Christian nation hoaxes: Jefferson and the Geneva Academy

October 31, 2007

Chris Rodda has a bee in her bonnet about wacky claims about early U.S. government and Christianity — same bee I get on occasion (hence the famous phrase, “busy bee”).

At Talk to Action, Chris dissects one of the more odd and arcane claims of people like the late D. James Kennedy, that Thomas Jefferson tried to import a group of Calvinist seminarians to make the University of Virginia a religious institution. Kennedy’s claim is voodoo history at its most voodoo.

There are two things wrong with Kennedy’s claim. The first is the time frame. Jefferson did consider a proposal to move the Geneva Academy to the United States, but this was in 1794 and 1795, thirty years before the University of Virginia opened. The second is that, although the Geneva Academy was originally founded by John Calvin in 1559 as theological seminary, by the late 1700s it had been transformed into an academy of science. The plan considered by Jefferson was not to import a religious school. It was to import a group of Europe’s top science professors.

This one is so obscure I have heard it only a couple of times. I’m not sure if that’s because it is so far outside the world of reality that even most victims of these hoaxes recognize it, or if it just hasn’t gotten traction yet.

Jefferson’s relationship with religious instruction in higher education really never varied. When he was a member of the governing board of the College of William and Mary, the board of visitors, he successfully campaigned to rid the college of preachers in teaching positions, and with the money saved, he got lawyers hired to instruct in other topics instead. In his design for the University of Virginia, he most carefully left out religious instruction from the curriculum, and from the space of the university. Since he shared this view of religion in education with James Madison, Madison followed through on keeping the University of Virginia as an institution of learning and not religious indoctrination.

So, how could someone with the research chops claimed by the late Rev. Kennedy get this stuff so exactly wrong? He relied on an old hoaxer, Mark A. Beliles. Why could a scholar like Kennedy could be sucked in by such a clear and blatant hoax? Bogus history seemed to attract him like seagulls to and overturned hot dog cart.

Read it, and gain enlightenment on the facts, if not on the motivations of Rev. Kennedy.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, America's founding, Bogus history, First Amendment, Heroes, Historic documents, History, Religious Freedom, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Essay contest: Being an American

October 31, 2007

I get e-mail, some of it interesting, some of it useful in the classroom.

The Bill of Rights Institute’s essay contest has a deadline just over a month away. Are your students entering?

Here’s the e-mail I got:

___________________________________

It is not too late for you and your students to win over $63,000 in awards by entering the Being an American essay contest.

Assign the essay question to your students today!
They will explore civic values, describe American ideals, and connect with the Constitution. The top winners will attend an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. on April 4-5, 2008!

Contest ends December 3, 2007!
Visit the contest website for more information.

2 Comments | Bill of Rights, History, Lesson plans, Patriotism, Student projects, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Writing the history texts: What is history?

October 29, 2007

History textbook controversies abound, really. Just a list to pull some sources together:

6 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Books, History, History Revisionism, Politics, Textbook Selection | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Michael Crichton hysterical for DDT

October 28, 2007

Ever notice how hysteric people claim they are normal, and everyone around them is hysterical? Case in point: Michael Crichton promoting DDT to students while taking leave of his science sense, at Cleveland High School in Reseda, California, in 2005:

Crichton surely knows better.

1. DDT is a known carcinogen for animals. Denialists’ wishes to the contrary, serious cancer fighters list DDT as a suspected human carcinogen.

2. Rachel Carson’s citations are solid, and stand up well today. Nothing Crichton publishes in his novels is so carefully footnoted. Carson offered more than 50 pages of references to the scientific publications that provided the evidence for what she wrote. President Kennedy appointed a panel of top scientists to investigate her claims, the President’s Science Advisory Committee. The headline in The Christian Science Monitor for their report, in May 1963, was “Rachel Carson vindicated.” The panel recommended limiting the use of DDT, much as it is limited today. It’s completely unacceptable for Crichton to claim against all the evidence that Carson’s science was bad. Repeated studies and new studies since 1962 confirm her science firmly.  [Update for World Malaria Day 2015:  That State Department document has gone missing; see press reports of the PSAC Committee here, and the full text of the report, “Use of Pesticides,” here.  A version of MIchael J. Friedman’s article on Rachel Carson, referred to in the first link in this paragraph, can be found here.]

3. Every “ban” on DDT, since the first in 1970 in Europe, has included an out clause to allow use to fight malaria. Crichton seems to have missed out on the facts: DDT ceased to be effective due to the rise of immunity and resistance in targeted mosquito populations, and DDT was never implemented against mosquitoes in other places, due to political reasons unrelated to any environmental concern.

4. DDT was never the panacea against malaria, since it does nothing to cure the disease in humans and it does nothing to fight the parasites themselves. DDT can’t make up for poverty that prevents people from building suitable homes or putting screens in windows, or buying mosquito netting for their children. DDT can’t work if people don’t drain mosquito breeding places around their homes.

5. Eggshell thinning studies were repeated dozens hundreds of times, and DDT and its daughter products are clearly implicated as the culprits in the fatal thinning of eggshells. It is telling that eggshell thicknesses have increased as DDT levels in residual form in tissues of birds has decreased. Crichton also omits more damning evidence: Studies showed that DDT affected the viability of eggs wholly apart from the eggshell problems. DDT kills chicks in the egg.

6. Malaria did not “explode” as a result of the discontinuation of DDT. Over more than a decade, malaria rates rose because the campaign to eradicate malaria aimed for an impossible goal, and overspraying of DDT and political instability hampered efforts to fight malaria.  Moreover, DDT was never banned for use against malaria.  In many nations where malaria exploded, DDT was the weapon of choice to fight it.  DDT often doesn’t work.  In Mexico, for example, DDT use was never stopped — DDT use has been constant since 1946.  And yet, Mexico has been fighting an increase in malaria for over a decade.  Only when Mexico adopted Rachel Carson’s recommendations did they begin to roll back the disease.

7. Crichton gets it right when he notes that the EPA “ban” on DDT included a waiver for use against malaria. But why does he forget that in every other paragraph?

8. Crichton mischaracterizes the Persistant Organic Pollutants (POPs) Treaty, saying that it bans DDT worldwide in the face of knowledge that such a ban was wrong. The treaty specifically allows continued production and use of DDT to fight disease. (Newer links to the POPs Treaty, also known as the Stockholm Convention, here.)

9. 30 million people may have died of malaria in a period Crichton doesn’t define, but it is incorrect to say they died as a result of DDT bans. DDT was still used in the countries where many of those people died (DDT has been in constant use in Mexico since 1946, for example, and malaria has come roaring back there as in other places). DDT was never used in several African nations where governmental instability prevented the creation of programs to fight disease. DDT can’t change governments. The global effort to “eradicate” malaria smashed into the parasites’ development of immunity to several drugs used to treat it in humans. DDT has never been effective in those cases. Crichton misattributes the deaths. (It’s nice he doesn’t cite the more absurd 500 million deaths figure that some people point to.)

10. Crichton’s claim that a lot of Americans “just don’t care” about malaria in Africa, because it harms people of color, is an interesting claim, but his implication that those people are environmentalists, and not the Bush administration which held up funding for malaria fighting, makes his concerns smell hypocritical.

While indicting hysteria against DDT, Crichton invokes hysteria in favor of the chemical. One wishes his science views were not so clouded by his politics.

11 Comments | DDT, History, Junk science, Malaria, Public health, Rachel Carson | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Texas History syllabus

October 28, 2007

It’s a toe in the water of internet-using instruction.  Here’s a syllabus for a 7th grade Texas history class at Pin Oak Middle School in the Houston Independent School district.

Notice that this class, as many in Texas do, puts the geography unit up front, not quite isolated from the rest of the class.  Regardless of how well geography is covered, I think we end up shorting the subject its due.

Kudos to Pin Oak MS, to Mr. Gomez, and I hope to see more.

(Surely there is a class in Texas that is farther along in integrating the internet into the Texas history curriculum — point them to us, Dear Readers?)

Leave a Comment » | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Texas history | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Global warming a piffle by comparison

October 26, 2007

Plant in drought-riven soil

Here’s the word from Bob Parks’ great e-letter, “What’s New,”October 26, 2007 edition; I’ve highlighted some stuff:

2. ENVIRONMENT: MAJOR U.N. REPORT SAYS IT’S “UNSUSTAINABLE.” According to a story in the New York Times this morning, a report issued by the United Nations yesterday in Paris is so frightening that French President Nicolas Sarkozy immediately put $1.4 billion into new energy sources and biodiversity. Unsustainable consumption of resources and population growth is taking Earth beyond the point of no return. As an example, the report says, two and a half times as many fish are being caught as the oceans can produce in a sustainable manner. No word yet from Washington on the U.S. response. No steps taken to protect the environment will help in the long run if population continues to grow.

Denialists will start whining in just a few seconds. Three . . . two . . . one . . .

Considering the weather (everywhere), fires in California, droughts in Georgia, the Nobel Peace Prize this year, you’d think this would be front page news.  Where did it run in your local paper?

Sources:

Leave a Comment » | Education, Environmental protection, Global warming, Globalization, History, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

NY Times backs overhaul of mining law

October 26, 2007

Congress seriously considers changes in mining laws in the U.S. — the General Mining Act of 1872 is 135 years old with no serious changes since its passage. President Ulysses S Grant signed the law.

The law affected much of the development of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, but this issue is generally ignored. The New York Times editorial page endorses the change process in an editorial today.

Originally enacted to encourage economic development in the West, the law gives precedence above all other land uses to mining for hard-rock minerals like gold, uranium and copper. It requires no royalties from companies that mine on public lands and contains no environmental safeguards. It has left a sad legacy of abandoned mines, poisoned streams and damaged landscapes throughout the West.

Now, at last, there is real hope for reform. Representative Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat who has been trying to modernize this law for two decades, has persuaded the Natural Resources Committee to approve a major rewrite.

The law is a major study in economics, government intervention and free markets. It would make a good topic for warm-ups or government intervention lesson plans in high school economics classes.

1 Comment | Economics, Environmental protection, Government, History, Law, Politics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History text accuracy: Okinawa mass suicides

October 25, 2007

Controversy surrounds history textbooks all over the world. Texans may be a bit more sensitive to the issues while the Texas Education Agency is revising curricula, but others are even more sensitive – such as Turkey, where controversy over the Armenian Genocide threatens to derail Turkey’s 40-year project to join the European Union; Japan, where citizens and other nations protest failures to mention harms done to people by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II; and even Europe in general, where controversy surrounds efforts to find a unifying, Europe-wide culture.

History is important in our relations with other nations. With increasing globalization, it becomes ever more important that all citizens have basic understanding of their local history, their national history, and world history, if only to avoid the social faux pas in socializing with people from other nations.

The issue is hot in Japan right now. Okinawa, a formerly independent kingdom annexed by Japan in the 19th century (did you know that?), hosted the biggest protest demonstration the island prefecture has ever seen, earlier this month – a protest over the changing of a few words in Japanese school history texts, removing the responsibility for mass suicides on Okinawa from the Japanese Imperial Army.

A story in the New York Times describes the anguish felt by Okinawans:

Brainwashed by Japanese Imperial Army soldiers into believing that victorious American troops would rape all the local women and run over the men with their tanks, Mr. Kinjo and others in his village here in Okinawa thought that suicide was their only choice. A week before American troops landed and initiated the Battle of Okinawa in March 1945, Japanese soldiers stationed in his village gave the men two hand grenades each, with instructions to hurl one at the Americans and then to kill themselves with the other.

Most of the grenades failed to explode. After watching a former district chief break off a tree branch and use it to kill his wife and children, Mr. Kinjo and his older brother followed suit.

”My older brother and I struck to death the mother who had given birth to us,” Mr. Kinjo said in an interview at the Naha Central Church, where he is the senior minister. ”I was wailing of course. We also struck to death our younger brother and sister.”

Mr. Kinjo agreed to tell his story again because the Japanese government is now denying, in new high school textbooks, that Okinawans had been coerced by Imperial troops into committing mass suicide.

The proposed changes to the school textbooks — the deletion of a subject, the change to the passive voice — amounted to just a couple of words among hundreds of pages. But the seemingly minor grammatical alterations have led to swelling anger in the Okinawa islands in Japan, cresting recently in the biggest protest here in at least 35 years and stunning the Japanese government.

How should texts deal with such issues?

China and Korea also protested the rewrite. Hot button issues involve the Japanese invasion and taking of Nanking in 1937, generally known to western historians as “the rape of Nanking;” Japanese treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs), including the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, what amounted to slave labor using POWs in Japan, and Korean women impressed into service as prostitutes to the Japanese Army, at what are euphemistically called “comfort stations.”

Texas history standards writers may benefit from taking a look at some of these other controversies, in other places. These lessons can apply to Texas and U.S. history, where Anglo and European colonist treatment of aboriginal natives is certainly an issue, but also to subjects such as biology and the treatment of evolution, health and the treatment of preventing sexually-transmitted diseases, and environmental science, and the treatment of pollution and climate change issues.

3 Comments | History, History Revisionism, Teaching, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lot of damage, not much benefit: The truth about Utah vouchers

October 22, 2007

Editorials in two of Utah’s second-tier daily newspapers spell out exactly why the Utah voucher proposal submitted to voters is a bad one. The Provo Daily Herald urges voters to study the voucher proposal, and then vote for it. The Logan Herald-Journal discusses a key problem for Cache Valley parents and educators, in aging buildings that are often older than the grandparents of the students, but which will cost a fortune to replace.

The Utah voucher plan is only half-vampire (blood sucking, that is; or money sucking), leaving with the public schools some of the money allocated for students who choose to leave — at least for five years. In that one regard, the Utah proposal stands a head above other voucher plans offered in the U.S.

That is not enough to make it a good proposal, however. Why?

Here are “givens” for this article, the basic set of facts we have to work from.

1. Crowding is a key problem for Utah schools. Statewide, public schools average 30 pupils per class. That’s above national norms, and twice the concentration of students that studies show make for the most effective classrooms (15 students). (A new study from the Utah Taxpayers Association, a usually credible source, shows Utah’s public school student population growing from today’s almost 550,000, to about 750,000 by 2022 — requiring more than $6 billion in new construction costs.)

2. Partly because of large families in Utah, per pupil spending ranks near the lowest in the U.S. The usual figure used in the voucher discussions in Utah is $7,500 per student per year, but I can find no source that corroborates that figure. The actual number is probably closer to $5,000 per student, but may be lower. Legislative analysts based their scrutiny of the proposal on the $7,500 figure, and for discussion purposes, that’s good enough. It won’t make any difference in the outcome. (A reader in comments on another post says the $7,500 figure comes from the Park City School District, the state’s richest — it may be high by as much as 40% for the state. Can that citation be accurate?)

3. Utah’s schools perform well above where they should be expected to perform, on the basis of number of teachers, teacher pay, and student populations. Despite crowding and shortage of money, three Utah middle schools were named among the nation’s 129 best last month. Utah students score respectably on nationally-normed tests. A high percentage of Utah students go to college. Utah parents deserve a great deal of the credit for this performance boost. Utah has for years had higher than average educational attainment. With several outstanding colleges and universities in a small state, many Utah parents have a degree or two, and they buy books, and that achievement and the drive to get education rub off on their children.

4. These problems should get worse without drastic action. Utah family size may decrease slightly, but immigration from other states adds to pupil population increases. Utah’s economy is not so outstanding that it can easily absorb significantly higher taxes to pay for schools. (See the Utah Taxpayers Association study, again.)

Those are the givens. Advocates of the voucher plan, notably people like Richard Eyre, who made a fortune investing in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and has since invested much of his time in dabblings in public policy, argue several benefits to the voucher plan:

A. Not much damage to public schools by taking money away. In fact, they argue, during the first five years, for each student who leaves a public school with a voucher, the school will keep at least $4,000 (this figure would apply only to the richest districts, if the baseline number comes from Park City as my commenter suggested). This $4,000 would be spread among the other 29 students remaining, effectively, leaving just under $140 additional money per student in the average classroom. (There are problems with this calculation, of course).

B. Public school classroom size will shrink, to the benefit of the remaining kids.

C. Public school spending can hold steady when schools fire the teachers who lose students (I assume this is a misstatement from the Eyres’ video — that instead, some savings might result from dismissal of low-performing teachers in schools where a significant portion of students leave).

D. Magically, competition will create better education.

Below the fold, I’ll tell you why the benefits will not obtain, and point out some of the dangers of pushing the whole education system over a cliff that are inherent in this scheme.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, History, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Spinning the hoax, saucing the gander

October 22, 2007

Bloggers who made the Dishonor Roll for mindlessly passing along a hoax quiz designed to pillory Hillary Clinton failed to make amends. So far as I can tell, not a one has apologized for the hoax, and a couple have their backs arched to hiss that they won’t change until or unless . . . well, they say the hoax is fair.

Really? Hoaxes are good things? Politicians make fair game?

Nuts.

Part of the problem comes from the way the questions plop out at people on that quiz. Any national polling firm can give us chapter and verse on the need to phrase questions and potential answers just so, so that they do not mislead the people questioned into making an answer choice they would not normally make. Any teacher can tell you that phrasing of questions and answer choices can affect the way students perform on a test.

So, let’s rephrase the quiz. How about a hoax quiz that makes Hillary look good? I’ll wager not one of the blogs that runs the earlier hoax would dare to run this quiz:

_________________________

American Free Enterprise: Who said it?

A little history lesson: If you don’t know the answer make your best guess. Answer all the questions before looking at the answers. Who said it?

1) “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

A. Abraham Lincoln
B. Alexander Hamilton
C. Andrew Jackson
D. None of the above

2) “It’s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few…and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity.”

A. Ronald Reagan
B. Franklin D. Roosevelt
C. Jesus
D. None of the Above

3) “(We)…can’t just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people.”

A. Herbert Hoover
B. Theodore Roosevelt
C. Rudolph Giuliani
D. None of the above

4) “We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own…in order to create this common ground.”

A. Winston Churchill
B. Sam Houston
C. Lincoln
D. None of the above

5) “I certainly think the free-market has failed.”

A. Ludwig von Mises
B. Milton Friedman
C. Herbert Hoover
D. None of the above

6) “I think it’s time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched.”

A. Alan Greenspan
B. Ben Bernanke
C. Teddy Roosevelt
D. None of the above

Answers below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Accuracy, History, Hoaxes, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: White House, Rosemary Woods

October 22, 2007

Rosmary Woods shows how she might have erased Nixon tapes

President Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, demonstrates how she thought she might have accidentally erased 18-1/2 minutes of tape, when she reached to answer her phone and her foot extended to the “erase” footpedal, in 1974.

Ms. Woods’s typewriter is an electric, as best I can make out, an IBM. (Update, May 21, 2008: Ben Batchelor of etypewriters.com dropped by in comments to say it’s an IBM Model D Executive. Thanks, Ben!)

Good resource discovered in getting this image: The Watergate Files, presented by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (at the University of Texas site). Image from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Dr. Pamela Bumsted.

15 Comments | History, Politics, Presidents, Richard M. Nixon, Typewriters | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Crazies promise to abandon California public schools?

October 21, 2007

No, the news is not that good, really. It’s not really news, either. WorldNet Daily, an on-line publication of borderline sanity, may have left the border.

If only it were a promise, instead of a “call to abandon the schools.”

“We’re calling upon every California parent to pull their child out of California’s public school system,” Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, told WND.

“The so-called ‘public schools’ are no longer a safe emotional environment for children. Under the new law, schoolchildren as young as kindergarten will be sexually indoctrinated and introduced to homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality, over the protests of parents, teachers and even school districts,” he said.

The law at issue went through the California legislature as SB 777, and now bans in school texts and activities any discriminatory bias against those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute, said.

There are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however. Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.

“So-called ‘public schools?'”

Below the fold, the full text of the law. You’ll note, Dear Reader, that the law includes protections for “students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs,” under the prohibition of discrimination on the bases of religion or sexual orientation, “or any other characteristic contained in the definition of hate crimes that is contained in the Penal Code.”

The new law will make it a crime to bully homosexual kids. Is that the real reason WND is worried about the bill, that it makes bullying a crime?

Why would anyone want to defend a right to bully kids? The purpose of the law is clear, from its purpose clause:

Existing law states that it is the policy of the state to afford equal rights and opportunities to all persons in the public or private elementary and secondary schools and postsecondary educational institutions of the state regardless of their sex, ethnic group identification, race, national origin, religion, or mental or physical disability and prohibits a person from being subjected to discrimination on those bases and contains various provisions to implement that policy.

Existing law prohibits a teacher from giving instruction, and a school district from sponsoring any activity, that reflects adversely upon persons because of their race, sex, color, creed, handicap, national origin, or ancestry.

This bill would revise the list of prohibited bases of discrimination and the kinds of prohibited instruction and activities and, instead, would refer to disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic contained in the definition of hate crimes that is contained in the Penal Code. The bill would define disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation for this purpose.

Would you pull your kid out of a public school because she doesn’t have a right to bully anybody?

Critics of the bill object even to correcting English usage on forms asking information about students; forms may now ask “gender” rather than the more gauche “sex.” California’s Catholics for the Common Good found that correction a threat, somehow:

“Who knows what the consequences would be of deleting the definition of ‘sex’ of a child as a biological fact and replace it with ‘gender,’ a subjective term to be determined by the student. The legislature never investigated the cost of accommodating student preferences for lavatory and locker room facilities.” Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Civil Rights, History, Law, Public education, Rampant stupidity, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Belated: Happy Anniversary, Chuck Yeager!

October 20, 2007

Panorama of the Mountains noted the 60th anniversary of the first known faster-than-sound flight by a human — October 14, 1947. Test pilot and all-around good guy Chuck Yeager did it.

Bell X-1, on display at National Air and Space Museum

This is a great post-World War II, Cold War story of technology that should pique interest in the time and the events for many students. For a 90 minute class, a solid lesson plan could be developed around the science and technology of the flight (yes, even in history — this is key stuff in the development of economics, too). The physics of sound, a brief history of flight and aircraft, the reasons for post-war development of such technologies, the political situation: There are a dozen hooks to get into the topic. Fair use would cover showing a clip from “The Right Stuff” about the flight, and there are some dramatic clips there. (The movie is 3 hours and 13 minutes; great stuff in a format too long for classroom use. Is there any possibility your kids would read the Tom Wolfe book?)

When will someone – the Air Force? NASA? an aircraft company? — put together a DVD with authorized film clips from the newsreels and the movie, and suggested warm ups and quiz questions?

Back in the bad old days one of my elementary school teachers did an entire morning on the speed of sound, aircraft engineering, and the history of faster-than-sound flight. I learned the accurate way to measure the distance to lightning by counting seconds to the thunder (it’s about a mile for every 5 seconds, not a mile for every second, as our school-yard lore had it).

  • Image at right: Brig. Gen. Charles E. Yeager today, with image of Bell X-1; U.S. Air Force imageChuck Yeager, collage with Bell X-1

This program, to fly at the speed of sound, at what is now Edwards Air Force Base changed the way science of flight is done in the U.S. Yeager led the group of Air Force pilots who proved that military pilots could do the testing of aircraft; the project proved the value of conducting research with experimental aircraft on military time. The methods developed for testing, evaluating, redesigning and retesting are still used today. The drive for safety for the pilots also grew out of these early efforts at supersonic flight.

Yeager’s flight came when technology was cool, not just for the virtual reality role playing games (RPGs), which were still decades in the future, but because it was new, interesting, and it opened a world of possibilities. We all wanted to fly airplanes, especially small, fast airplanes. Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Airplanes, Cold War, Heroes, History, Physics, Science, Technology | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pro voucher forces panic in Utah

October 20, 2007

With the nation’s first state-wide voucher on the ballot in Utah this November, and with the polls showing a large majority ready to vote the idea down, voucher supporters push every button they can find, hoping one of them is the real “panic” button. Panic button, from iWantOneofThose

But, legislators recruiting lobbyists into a referendum? A new blog dedicated to the Utah referendum, Accountability, carries the story with links to local Utah news media.

. . . I know there’s a whole industry built up now to protect the will of lawmakers from their constituents.

But I didn’t think that was the prevailing wisdom here. We hadn’t fallen victim to the political industry like folks have back East.

Then I read articles like Paul Rolly’s column in this morning’s Trib and I wonder if we’re not so far away from succumbing to it, too.

“Lawmakers stack the deck on vouchers” is the headline, and the first sentence tells the whole story. “About 20 lobbyists were summoned to a meeting Monday by legislative leaders who urged them to roll up their sleeves and help save the voucher law.”

Isn’t a ballot referendum supposed to be the voice of the people? In fact, isn’t it the last chance the people have to have their say on a law, after the legislature has had its way? That’s what the Constitution provides. So what’s wrong with informing every Utahn man and woman of voting age what the referendum says, answer any questions they have, then let them vote on whether to keep this law or discard it?

The story as related at Accountability would be a road map for a corruption investigation into the Republican leaders of the Utah legislature for a state attorney general out to defend the electoral process from graft and the legislative process from corruption. Does Utah have such an attorney general? Utah’s relatively clean and open political processes, artificially bipartisan by LDS Church decree in the 19th century, appears to be going the way of all political flesh.

Cash is provided from interest groups far outside Utah, groups that have never considered the effects of a voucher bill on a kid in San Juan County, Utah, who has a 50-mile, one-way bus ride just to get to the nearest public school.

Later stories at Accountability detail the cash flow from outside, and the folly out-of-state and out-of-their-mind interests create in local elections. (I have not found any identification for the author of that blog — does anyone know who it is?)

Maybe it’s time we took a more historic view of this fight, and labeled it for what it is: As Chris Mooney has documented the Republican War on Science, this Utah skirmish is part of the larger War on Education; whether it’s an exclusively Republican declaration of war is not yet clear. It doesn’t bode well for peace, progress and prosperity that the Republican leaders of the Utah legislature are the ones commanding the gun batteries shooting at Utah’s schools.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Elections, History, Politics, Public education, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History of public health victories in the U.S.

October 19, 2007

I wish U.S. history texts for public schools would invest more in the history of public health practice in the U.S.  Much of our prosperity can be traced to good public health practices — the wide availability of generally safe drinking water, effective systems to remove sewage and garbage, and other work to diminish illness.

So, in quick note form pirated directly from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (and because this has been hanging fire in my “to edit” box for way too long), here are some public health achievements I think the textbook editors need to consider for the next editions: 

Ten Great Public Health Achievements — United States, 1900-1999

  • Vaccination
  • Motor-vehicle safety
  • Safer workplaces
  • Control of infectious diseases
  • Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke
  • Safer and healthier foods
  • Healthier mothers and babies
  • Family planning
  • Fluoridation of drinking water
  • Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard

More internet friendly version here, with links to articles on each one:

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/tengpha.htm

Here are the details.

Much more available. Here is a site, with a good section talking about careers in public health (for those career planning courses out there). Here’s a similar, less wowee site from the American Schools of Public Health (ASPH). Ethics issues here.

I include the links — there is no reason you can’t add this to your courses, especially in the sections that meet the standards on discussion of achievements of technology.  Surely these are technological achievements of great merit.

4 Comments | History, Public education, Public health, TEKS | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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