Idaho’s Rep. Bill Sali is disturbed. But will he seek treatment?
Better, might he read the Constitution if we give him the link?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula, and to Dispatches on the Culture Wars.
Photo probably from the Spokane, Washington, Spokesman-Review
4 Comments | 
America's founding, First Amendment, Humor, Politics, U.S. Constitution, Voodoo history | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
No kidding. I run into this title a couple of times a day, and I laugh every time. Go see. Over at Neurophilosophy.
Leave a Comment » | Humor, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s a twist on the story the Mormons in Utah have a monument to — in the Mormon version, it was birds that saved them from the crickets.
Leave a Comment » | History, Humor, Natural history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
1 Comment | Humor, Intelligent Design | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Wherever you are, Ben, happy birthday. Even though you’re a Republican.
Born on the day before we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Ben is not really older than the Declaration itself.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Administrivia, Humor, Point of personal privilege, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Faithful readers here may note some long, substantive comments from another “Ed,” who is connected with the Open History Project, it turns out. I’ve linked to the OHP before, but not often enough. It really is a treasure trove.
For example, there is a page of links to computer/internet media works. Included there is a fascinating animation from the British site accompanying what was a PBS Masterpiece Theatre program in the U.S. from Charles Dickens’ novel, Bleak House. The animation, by a creative crew called Rufflebrothers (Mark and Tim Ruffle), covers the life of Charles Dickens. As a simple cartoon, it’s droll — notice Dickens’ siblings dropping dead in an early scene. As a piece of history pedagoguery, it’s brilliant. [It’s Flash animation, and I can’t copy it to paste a sample.]
(I can’t find this animation on the PBS website for Bleak House — but there is another, simpler timeline, covering Dickens and more authors.)
Watch the British animation of Dickens’ life, then go back and take it scene by scene. A pocket watch allows you to see what else was happening in history at that moment. Careful linking allows you to get much more detail — in the scene where his siblings are shown dying (as they did, in fact), the feature gives the details of each of Charles’ brothers and sisters, opening a door of new understanding for the inspiration of the characters in Dickens’ work (It was originally Tiny Fred? Really? After Dickens’ younger brother Frederick?).
Imagine such an animation for the life of George Washington, or for the life of Abraham Lincoln, or Henry Ford, Queen Victoria, Sam Houston, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, or Albert Einstein.
What in the world can we do to encourage BBC to do more like this? Who else can get in on the act?
What other treasures await you at the Open History Project?
2 Comments | Cartoons, Education, History video sources, Humor, Literature, On-line education, On-line learning, Pedagogy, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Video and film | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Generally I avoid “meme” games. This is the second one I’ve seen which offers the grand possibility of producing some information I’d like to have about other people.
So, the tag: I hope we’ll hear from Only Crook in Town, David Parker at Another History Blog, Clio Bluestocking, TexasEd, PM Summer at Mug Shots (I hope the site’s not dead!), Michelle at Living Classroom (a fun place to learn, I think), Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen, and elementaryhistoryteacher at History is Elementary.
I got tagged by Brian at Laelaps. Here are the rules:
1. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.
Here are my 8 factoids:
1. I love the flavor of some stewed plum, baby food — it makes a great flavor surprise between two layers of a good cake.
2. Henry Mancini is one of my favorite composers and recording artists. I may not have the largest collection of Mancini in existence, but it’s good — thanks largely to KSL AM’s purge of vinyl from their library in the late 1970s, and a lifetime of collecting. My wife won my heart (again) when she tracked down a good copy of the Mancini-composed and directed soundtrack album for “Hatari!” It still sounds better than any CD.
3. I had a nice, rather long conversation with Mo Udall about his running for the presidency, in 1972, in an elevator at the Salt Palace during the State Democratic Convention, in Salt Lake City. He carefully detailed how no sitting member of the House of Representatives had made the leap to the presidency since, oh, the time of Isaiah, or Habakkuk, and said he wasn’t going to run. One of the great attractions of graduate study in Tucson in 1976, for me, was the chance to work on Udall’s campaign. But, they didn’t need volunteers in Tucson in 1976.
4. I was chased out of the Mormon church (in Burley, Idaho) by a woman who insisted kids shouldn’t draw pictures of dinosaurs to represent God’s creation. She told me dinosaurs were fictional. I considered the fossils I had collected (at the ripe age of 7), decided she was crazy, and dropped out with my parents’ consent. It wasn’t for another decade or so that I discovered the woman was teaching “false doctrine” for Mormons. I didn’t go back.
5. Solo hiking was a key pastime of my youth, in the area around Mt. Timpanogos, just opposite the site where a kid was killed by a black bear last week. It helped me get over a fear of being alone. I don’t think my parents — or anyone else — ever knew where I was. I also don’t think there were any bears for at least 100 miles, then.
6. See the “G” on Little Mahogany Mountain, just in front of Timpanogos? In 1970 or 1971, as studentbody president, I got a 25-year lease on that site from the Forest Service. I wish I had a copy of that lease now. 
7. I have odd areas of ignorance, and they are many. I didn’t take any biology courses until college. I never could pass calculus. I always have to look up the rule against perpetuities
8. One of my greatˆn grandfathers was a Mormon polygamist named William Madison Wall. He was the first person to drive a wagon up Provo Canyon, which he promptly claimed for his own land holdings. He drove the team up the canyon scouting a place to put a small town, now known as Wallsburg, where he put in a farm and four of his eight wives. The wives didn’t all get along, so he put four of the dissenters on the farm in Wallsburg — the canyon was impassable in winter, and he had peace for nearly half of every year. Part of Mr. Wall’s claim was the backside of Timpanogos, including a little ski resort where I learned to ski, known as Timp Haven. The end of my family that ran the ski resort didn’t open it on Sundays — interfered with church, don’t you know — and so they were happy to unload the land and the ski resort to some crazy actor who made an offer. He renamed the resort Sundance in honor of his recently-completed movie. The actor was Robert Redford. He once graciously pulled me out of a snowbank after a particularly spectacular crash. Nice guy. I ran into him for years in odd canyons and towns all over the west. He usually asked that I not identify him to other people, who had not recognized him. I’d love to have inherited a piece of that land, but Redford has done better by it than anyone ever had reason to hope was possible.
8 Comments | Administrivia, Humor, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Prangstgrüp?
Have you ever wondered whether your misbehaving students were setting you up, perhaps with their cell-phone video cameras running?
Hope they have the grace, wit and production values of this group: Prangstgrüp (click on “Lecture Musical”)
Tip of the old scrub brush to neurocontrarian.
[Couldn’t get this video to embed — sorry.]
Leave a Comment » | Humor, Pedagogy, School discipline, Student projects, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This site will challenge your hoax detectors — just enough facts to ring true, enough humor to make the parodies appealing and likely to be repeated as fact. This Day in Mythstory is written by Chris Regan, a humor writer formerly with “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
When the professionals hoax up history, at least they do it in good faith.
(This site is probably funnier if you know which parts are accurate, and which are not. Basically, the historical events cited are real, though the reasons given are suspect. Each of these pieces might make a good warm-up to get students discussing what is accurate, and what is humor.)
Leave a Comment » | History, Hoaxes, Humor, Teaching, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I posted it earlier today, and this photo bugged me:
Why? What was it that made that thing appear so familiar?
I finally figured it out. The good news: Business change guru Tom Peters will be pleased to hear that this man above, rendered in wax, Millard Fillmore, was once called “the handsomest man I ever met,” by Queen Victoria.
Why would Peters be pleased?
Look:
Tom Peters
Or maybe this one better makes the point:
Tom Peters
Uncanny resemblance, no?
Maybe Peters’ company could buy the wax head . . .
_____________
Update, October 9, 2011 — Upon reflection, I think Tom Peters the much more handsome man. Mind you, the story is that Queen Victoria called Fillmore the “most handsome man” she had ever seen. That was before Sean Connery, before Brad Pitt, before Clark Gable, before Morgan Freeman . . .
1 Comment | Business, Humor, Millard Fillmore | Tagged: Business, Humor, Millard Fillmore, Tom Peters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I left the building by a side door. 30 minutes after the final bell, the rules are that students are to be off campus. Two students were sitting on the retaining wall at the end of the walk, near the parking lot. “Hey, mister – you got a cell phone?” Was this the classic ‘may-I-borrow-your-cell-phone scam?
“Tell me why you want to know.”
“Oh, I just wondered what time it is,” he said, quite as if it was the normal way of the world.
“I have a watch; it’s 4:15.”
“A watch! Cool!”
Another generation gap: Many kids don’t wear watches. They carry cell phones that have the time accurate to within a few seconds – most of them. A few waiting for rides didn’t have a phone, and so they had no way to know the time.
How much longer will Rolex be able to hold on?
(Where were their parents or other rides?)
1 Comment | History, Humor, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You just can’t write parody of creationists and creationism. A retired physician, Tennessee state senator is demanding the Tennessee State Department of Education provide the answers to questions left hanging by the trial of John T. Scopes in 1925. Read about it in the Nashville Post, in an article by Ken Whitehouse.
It appears as though the state senator, Raymond Finney, either failed Tennessee history, or just doesn’t pay attention to excellent advice and warnings from George Santayana.
Update, February 28, 2007: Perhaps Sen. Finney should check out this comment at the blog Sola Fide.
3 Comments | Creationism, Education, History, Humor, Intelligent Design, Natural history, No Child Left Behind Act, Public education, Science and faith, State school boards, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Humor would be impossible without the newspapers, but a lot of really funny stuff happens that never makes it there.
Shortcut: The National Pork Board is working for a happy solution with The Lactivist, who had previously been threatened with legal action for promoting breastfeeding with a t-shirt that says: “The Other White Milk.”
When I taught in a program that included the district’s teen pregnancy courses, I had a kid who one day, out of the blue, insisted that he’d never let his “baby momma” breast feed his son, “because I don’t want him growing up to be homo.” When such eruptions of ignorance and bigotry occur, what is to be done?
As luck would have it, he was studying the Progressive Era, and we had a lengthy discussion on public health issues, and how to improve the health of the population overall. We found several websites (which, if available through the district’s filters, were non-objectionable) discussing the value of breastfeeding in giving kids a head start on health and brain development. My student was skeptical.
In the face of that kind of health-threatening ignorance and such bizarre hoaxes, one quickly comes to understand that radical campaigns to promote breastfeeding are required — even those that depend on humor.
You will get a few laughs, and eventual hope for a happy resolution, following the story of Lactivist’s tussle with the marketers at the Pork Council, with a special tip of the old scrub brush to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Leave a Comment » | Hoaxes, Humor, Public education, Public health, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Town Hall in Leuven, Belgium; image from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Did I really miss this last month? A television network in Belgium, RTBF, started out the morning reporting on the breakup of Belgium. Rather contrary to the rules of hoaxes set up by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, no mention of a dramatization was made for at least a half-hour.
And of course, it was all a hoax. The network said they wanted to generate discussion about how Belgium works, etc., etc. Not everyone was happy with the kickoff to discussion.
I have no particular dog in that fight, though I’m fond of Belgium. My wife spent a year studying in Louvin (Louvain, Leuven) (before I knew her), and we have wonderful photos. My own business trip to Brussells was less than 24 hours, though we conducted our business in lightning fashion and were able to spend the evening in a wonderfully lit historic square sampling several brands of beer — okay, many brands. We all made it to the Oh-Dark-thirty airplane home the next morning (some in better shape than others).
It’s always an eye-opener to learn how little most people know about the country, though it plays a huge role in the European Union, in NATO, and in the history of the 20th century, especially World Wars I and II.
Now it appears even Belgians don’t know whether their nation would break up or not. Jacques Brel is no longer alive and well.
More:
3 Comments | Current History, Geography - Political, History, Hoaxes, Humor, Music education, Travel | Tagged: Belgium, History, Hoaxes, Humor, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 