My news grabbers frequently take in articles about the recovery of some wild species in some far-flung place, a benefit of our having stopped the use of DDT in the area.
It occurs to me these stories should be filed away somewhere for future reference.
I grew up in this town in the 1960s and ’70s never having seen nor heard a bald eagle or Peregrine falcon. I could only listen as my father (an MNR game warden) treated me to stories of the magnificent raptors previously living along the Nipigon River, Sibley and the Nor’Westers. I was 25 years old before I saw my first bald eagle and that was in Minnesota.
Decades of DDT use decimated the predator bird population to almost extinction in Ontario. The government eventually recognized the problem and corrected it by banning DDT in 1970. With the help of local groups, finally the birds are back.
In 1989, the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists, with support from the Ministry of Natural Resources, launched Project Peregrine “in an attempt to reintroduce this species to the Superior north shore . . . In 1993, successful nesting peregrines were recorded for the first time in the last quarter-century . . . due to an abundance of excellent habitat.”
A mere 20 years has gone by. Are we going to allow another crime against these species?
Allowing Horizon Wind to rape the escarpment for a few megawatts that we do not need now or in any foreseeable future is falling into a bully trap.
Parties have stated there will be no harm to the birds or to the escarpment. Au contraire. The blasting alone, not to mention the construction and roads, can be compared to demolishing the whole north core downtown and building a skyscraper no one intends to occupy.
Leave the birds and the escarpment alone. Go home, Horizon Wind.
Maggie Cummins
Thunder Bay
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
’Tis the season to be careful. As you make your lists and check them twice, don’t forget to keep your eyes open for scammers who try to take your goodwill — and leave you with nothing to show for it.
Here are some of the top online scams to beware of this holiday season.
Cheating Charities
Families in your neighborhood are going hungry. Children in far-away countries are sick and need your help. You can give generously this holiday season, but be sure that you’re donating to a legitimate charity, not a scammer. Check out any online charity solicitation very closely. Some, unfortunately, are fraudulent.
Stay safe:
Run the charity through the databases at Charity Navigator (CharityNavigator.org) or the Better Business Bureau (BBB.org/US/Charity) to see whether it’s legitimate.
Never give your credit card or bank account information to someone who contacted you, whether by phone, by email or even in person.
Resist the urge to donate to unfamiliar charities if you don’t have time to check them out thoroughly.
An email pitch from a recognized organization might be legitimate, but to be safe, don’t click that link. Instead, use a search engine to find the site, and make your payment that way.
Bogus Bargains
Every year, there’s that one item you absolutely need to get, or else you risk ruining Christmas forever. Savvy shopper that you are, you want to make sure you don’t overpay. And then you find it online for a great price! Before you click that “Buy” button, stop and think: Why would anyone sell this hot-ticket item at a discount?
Stay safe:
Don’t order from a site you’ve never heard of. Trust the big names: Amazon, eBay, and other established retailers with policies in place to protect you.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. No one is going to sell you this year’s equivalent to the Cabbage Patch Kids or Tickle Me Elmo for less than retail price. In fact, if an item is in high demand, they’ll likely sell it for more than retail. So either cough up the cash or wait until after the holiday rush is over and sales ease back to normal.
Use a one-time credit card number with a limit just above your purchase price (ask your bank or credit card provider for information) if you decide to order from a lesser-known reseller.
Happy Holidays?
Grandma Jane sent you a holiday e-card? Just click to view it … and infect your computer with spyware or worse. E-card scams prey on your sense of social niceties: You get a card, you open it. But don’t let politeness cut you off from your computer.
Stay safe:
If you receive a card from a person you barely know, or if the email notification is full of grammar and spelling errors, delete it.
Trust your gut. If you suspect the link is fraudulent, don’t click it. Just trash it. You can always send an email to the supposed sender asking if the card is legit.
Never download software in order to view a card.
Freebie Fraud
Who doesn’t want a free iPad? It’s incredibly tempting to click on these offers. Best-case scenario, though, is that you’ll discover you only have to buy $2,000 of worthless products to get your $500 iPad. Worst case? You’ll provide your credit card number, get nothing in return, and find out that thieves have run up thousands in fraudulent charges in the meantime.
You might also come across free e-book offers online. Some of these are legitimate; for example, Amazon makes plenty of free Kindle books available daily. But many free e-books are filled with spam links and malware designed to catch your credit card information.
Stay safe:
Accept the cold, hard truth that no one — not Bill Gates, not Apple, not anyone — is going to give you a high-value item for free. Delete all offers immediately.
Stick with e-book sellers and authors you already know, advises the Better Business Bureau (BBB). If an e-book piques your interest but the author seems unfamiliar, do a quick search and see what comes up.
Never click on links inside an e-book unless you purchased it from a site you know and trust, says the BBB. And you’re always better off typing the link into your browser rather than clicking directly from the book.
Working the System
If you could use a little extra cash for the holidays, you’re not alone — and scammers know it. They offer you the chance to earn thousands of dollars per week just by using your computer. Once again, set your excitement aside and let common sense prevail.
Stay safe:
Never pay anyone in order to work. A job should pay you, not the other way around.
Don’t provide your credit card or other personal information for a “background check” for work you found online.
Do your own background check: Look up the company, ask questions and push for answers. A legitimate company won’t have any problem providing plenty of information.
With these tips in mind, may your holidays be merry and scam-free.
Abbi Peretshas been writing about technology, parenting, health care, kitchen gadgets and other topics for the last 15 years. Her work has been featured in numerous print and online publications.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
. . . we could solve all energy crises forevermore.
Over at Watt’s Up With That, the leading anti-science blog on the web, Anthony Watt turned the podium over to the indefatigable, often inscrutable, sometimes-funny-but-almost-always wrong, Willis Eschenbach, who worries about when solar power may run out:
Their study includes “renewable” sources like solar, although I’ve never found out exactly how they plan to renew the sun once it runs out.
In a just and sane world, Dave Barry would be preparing to sue Eschenbach for infringing on Barry’s humor patent.
Dr. Douglas Brinkley writes history, and teaches. In the last decade he’s been one of our premiere historians of conservation and wilderness preservation, especially as started by Theodore Roosevelt.
The issue at the hearing was the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
One may get a whiff of “skeptic” desperation at the hearing — Brinkley’s written a book on wilderness protection. That’s why he was called to testify.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Eli Rabett. He’s right — it’s tough to improve on the straight dope, the unexpurgated version. So most of this post is borrowed from the Bunny’s Spartan, laconic post of this same material.
Dr. Brinkley's 2011 history of wilderness and preservation of Alaska
From a review of Brinkley’s important 2006 history, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast: “In his preface to ‘The Great Deluge,’ Douglas Brinkley writes, ‘My hope is that this history, fast out of the gates, may serve as an opening effort in Katrina scholarship.’ He needn’t worry. A prolific author, known for publishing at breakneck speed, Brinkley has put his skills to good use by interviewing hundreds of Katrina survivors, disaster responders and public officials, and then weaving their disparate stories into a seamless narrative of the hurricane’s momentous first week. It’s a microhistory, logging in at more than 700 pages, but its thick detail provides a ground-level view of human behavior far richer than the breathless news reports that stunned and shamed the nation in the summer of 2005.
Brinkley’s book that Don Young should have already read, but better read now if he loves Alaska: The Quiet World – Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960; a good description of the book from the publisher, HarperCollins: “A riveting history of America’s most beautiful natural resources, The Quiet World documents the heroic fight waged by the U.S. federal government from 1879 to 1960 to save wild Alaska—Mount McKinley, the Tongass and Chugach national forests, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, and the Coastal Plain of the Beaufort Sea, among other treasured landscapes—from the extraction industries. Award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley traces the wilderness movement in Alaska, from John Muir to Theodore Roosevelt to Aldo Leopold to Dwight D. Eisenhower, with narrative verve. Basing his research on extensive new archival material, Brinkley shows how a colorful band of determined environmentalists created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just before John F. Kennedy became president. “
Christmas at the White House with the Obamas takes on a particularly merry glow of the better spirits of the season.
"WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 30: The official White House Christmas tree, the centerpiece of the Blue Room, is on display during the first viewing of the 2011 White House Christmas decorations November 30, 2011 in Washington, DC. Honoring Blue Star families, the 18-foot 6-inch balsam fir tree is decorated with framed military medals and handmade holiday cards created by military children living on installations around the world. The theme, 'Shine, Give, Share,' runs throught the White House with a 400-pound White House Gingerbread House and 37 Christmas trees." Getty Images
How that must frost people who blindly and often stupidly oppose the president.
37 Christmas trees in the Executive Mansion, reflecting the Obama Christmas theme, “Shine, Give, Share”
Two trees honoring veterans and military service, one Gold Star tree, one Blue Star tree, to promote awareness of the meaning of the blue and gold star traditions
Two trees honoring veterans and military service, one Gold Star tree, one Blue Star tree, to promote awareness of the meaning of the blue and gold star traditions
Lots of kids — receptions for children of servicemen have provided a parade of cheeriness
Bo, the dog, stars in a variety of ways, including a recyclable replica of the dog made from trash bags
85,000 holiday visitors
Entertainment for 12,000 volunteers, Congressmen, staff, Secret Service, and others
The 2011 White House holiday guidebook distributed to visitors, created by eight students from the Corcoran College of Art and Design (the Corcoran Gallery is just around the corner)
Christopher Monckton, Orly Taitz, Bill O’Reilly and John Boehner will deny, or lament, all of it. If living well is the best revenge, celebrating the holidays well comes close to the best rebuttal of the hoaxes.
The first thing I gleaned from this little tutorial will probably not surprise you: There really is a textbook way to fix our current mess. Short-term stimulus works to help an economy recover from a recession. Some kinds of stimulus pay off more quickly than others. Once the economic heart is pumping again, we need to get our deficits under control. The way to do that is a balance of spending cuts, increased tax revenues and entitlement reforms. There is room to argue about the proportions and the timing, and small differences can produce large consequences, but the basic formula is not only common sense, it is mainstream economic science, tested many times in the real world.
So what’s the problem? Why is our system so fundamentally stuck? Partly it’s a colossal, bipartisan lack of the political courage required to tell people what they sort of know but don’t want to hear. Partly it’s a Republican Party that, for its own cynical reasons, wants no deal with this president. Partly it’s moneyed, focused lobbies that swarm in defense of specific advantages written into the law; there is no comparable lobby for compromise, let alone sacrifice.
Is reasoned discourse such that much a lost art in America today? Keller extends his point to cover several areas of discussion — President Obama’s birthplace, global warming and what to do about it, vaccines, etc. He could as easily have added whether Rachel Carson murdered more people than Mao Zedong, cures for our education woes, and the designated hitter rule.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man has value; but in the land of the knee-walking turkeys the one-eyed man is just one more roost to crap on.
What is a rational person to do?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Twain had a comment on the Texas Education Agency and State Board of Education:
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.
– Following the Equator; Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar
The Nobel literature committees were slow; Twain did not win a Nobel in Literature; he died in 1910. Churchill did win, in 1953.
Both men were aficionados of good whiskey and good cigars. Both men suffered from depression in old age.
Both men made a living writing, early in their careers as newspaper correspondents. One waged wars of a kind the other campaigned against. Both were sustained by their hope for the human race, against overwhelming evidence that such hope was sadly misplaced.
Both endured fantastic failures that would have killed other people, andboth rebounded.
Each possessed a great facility with words, and wit, and frequently said or wrote things that people like to remember and repeat again.
Both of them rank near the top of the list of people to whom almost any quote will be attributed if the quote is witty and the speaker can’t remember, or doesn’t know, who actually said it.
Both men are worth study. And wouldn’t you really love to have had them over to dinner?
Twain, on prisons versus education:
“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” – Speech, November 23, 1900
Churchill on the evil men and nations do:
“No One Would Do Such Things”
“So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenceless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.”
—1923, recalling the possibility of war between France and Germany after the Agadir Crisis of 1911, in The World Crisis,vol. 1, 1911-1914, pp. 48-49.
No time at the moment to tell my story on this topic (the punchline of the thing that got me in trouble starts, ” . . . or next to Christopher Columbus, the greatest New Dealer of all time . . .”).
This has creeped me out for a couple of days, and it’s just getting more bizarre.
So, with no sense of irony of the Orwellian nature of what they were doing, Brownback and his staff complained to the school of the girl about what she wrote — which, while stupidly offensive, was nothing major.
Plus, the Governor’s office asked the school to discipline the girl. Alas, the principal complied with the request. (When do teachers and administrators stand up for their students? Why not this time?)
Brownback spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said her office had forwarded a copy of Sullivan’s tweet to organizers of the school-sponsored event “so that they were aware what their students were saying in regards to the governor’s appearance.
Did the governor’s staff keep copies of all the Tweets they monitored? Did they suggest accolades for the kids who gushed over Brownback’s . . . positions on the issues?
Wholly apart from the obvious free speech issues, which could well be decided against the girl since various courts have ruled students park most of their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door (not religion, though), I was a little creeped out at someone professing to be an adult monitoring the teen’s Tweets for her friends.
What other teen aged girls is he monitoring? What part of Kansas law gives him that authority? Which borderline of “child abuse” or “stalking” did he really intend to walk?
Sam Brownback, stop stalking Kansas teenagers. It’s ugly, and creepy, and it reveals you to be small . . . and creepy.
(Yes, I know — it technically doesn’t fall under the Kansas stalking law. But Kansas stalking law didn’t anticipate cyber stalking, either. A version of the Kansas statute, below the fold.)
Business and politics drift so slowly and amicably in Kansas that Brownback has time and thinks it worth the trouble to monitor Tweets from teenagers? There’s a bigger judgment issue here than Emma’s little lapse of it.
I do like the work of business and management gurus who tend to look at things oddly, and ask the odd, just-right questions.
Jason Fried’s work found that most people, when they “need to get work done,” don’t go to an office.
Listen to his TEDS Talk, and consider, dear teacher or education administrator: What if schools are not the places to teach, or worse, not places to learn?
Now: Who the heck is Jason Fried?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I would have sworn I had posted this earlier. I can’t find it in any search right now.
So, here it is:
Hans Rosling does a program on BBC showing, among other things, great data displays. In this one he shows how the development of trade and free enterprise economics lifted most of the world out of dismal, utter poverty, over the course of 200 years.
“200 countries, 200 years, in 4 minutes – the Joy of Statistics”
How can you use this in the class, world history teachers? Economics teachers? Does freedom mean you can get rich? Or does getting rich mean you get freedom? Can a nation achieve riches without freedom, or freedom without riches?
More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wgq0l
Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Our textbooks and curriculum guides too often fail to make clear the links between the bloody conflicts in the Kansas Territory and the Civil War, between the conflicts engaged in by men like John Brown in Kansas, and later at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and the conflicts of the Civil War.
We might make the history more vivid and clear with the use of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” an epic war song based closely on a folk tune favored by Union troops of the time, conscripted specifically because of that affinity by Howe to serve the greater action of repurposing the war from merely saving the Union to freeing people from bondage. It’s a study in propaganda earlier than we usually think of it.
An early lyric sheet for "Battle Hymn of the Republic," by Julia Ward Howe, Library of Congress via New York Times
Most of my students claim not to know the song, “John Brown’s Body,” and an astonishing number of the students say they don’t know “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It’s a chance to bore them — or instruct them, if the planets and stars align — using a bit of music (a teacher should be able to find a copy of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s version of the “The Battle Hymn” with little difficulty; it appears in the hymnals of most Protestant sects, so you can get a copy of the lyrics; you’ll have to do a search to find a good copy of “John Brown’s Body,” though; I’ve not found one I like to use in class).
It might be a short lesson, an adjunct to a lesson, or a project for a student with some choir training.
Gilpin wrote:
Even if Howe’s song spoke to a different understanding of the war, her efforts to transform “John Brown’s Body” into a national patriotic text meant that, much like Brown’s afterlife, people would end up using and abusing “Battle Hymn” as they saw fit. What Howe observed in that Union camp outside of Washington in 1861 was just the beginning of a war of clashing agendas and endlessly obscured meanings. To be sure, those north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line knew that the developing war was being fought over slavery – its brutal realities, its political volatility and especially its uncertain future – but even in its opening months, commentary about the war was already cloaked in the bland language of preserving the Union or defending states’ rights. Assessing the war itself, Howe later wrote that “its cruel fangs fastened upon the very heart of Boston and took from us our best and bravest.”
For Howe and generations of Americans, the cruelty of war demanded a providential overseer. Despite her urge to celebrate noble-hearted men like Brown, “Battle Hymn” helped to take responsibility for the Civil War out of the brutal and clumsy hands of ordinary mortals. To be sure, Brown his death would help to make his nation holy and especially to make all men free, but his radical extremism was frightening to most Americans. Soon enough, the Civil War would be transformed by songs like Howe’s into a conflict of necessity and destiny – a providential trial by fire. That narrative, of a harrowing but essential national adolescence, would eventually be at the expense of those Brown had died for, and whose fate the war was being fought to settle.
Christmas gets underway at the White House, with a special guest appearance by Bo, the dog:
Vodpod videos no longer available.
One long-standing American Christmas tradition is the Christmas hoax about the president. Probably the most famous, if not the first, was H. L. Mencken’s column in December 1917, in which he claimed Millard Fillmore a failure as president, whose only achievement was putting the first bathtub in the Executive Mansion — all of it make up, whole cloth fiction.
Since the election of Barack Obama we’ve seen claims that Obama had banned Christmas trees, claims that Obama required only Marxist and communist ornaments, and other wild stories that only a fool, a victim of lobotomy, a Bill O’Reilly fan or Michelle Bachmann would believe after the second cup of coffee in the morning.
What will the hoax claims be this year? ABC posted this raw footage of the delivery of the Christmas tree, but that alone will not inoculate us from a Yule-tide hoax.
What atrocious inventions will the Obama-haters send our way this year? If it’s a claim that there’s no tree, you know better already. You’ve seen the video.
Kathryn sent me the link and said I had to watch it. One learns to listen to one’s Trophy Wife™ if one has any sense.
Louie Schwartzberg’s TEDS appearances are greater than one (“(Louie at TEDS)>1”). When you watch his films, you can understand why he’s popular among the secular wooists, and even among the thinkers and scientists. One might rationally wonder why he’s not invited to speak at a lot of church services, but that would be a rational response. Schwartzberg’s earlier appearance at the Bathtub covered his TEDS presentation on his film, “Pollination.”
This one is more ephemeral, but a lot more human. I hope to see his work in theaters, soon.
What does this film make you feel, and what does it make you think?
How many of the locations on that film did you identify?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
New short from the Texas Parks and Wildlife people:
The smoke may be gone but the Bastrop fires of Labor Day weekend are still a smoldering concern for biologists. They’re keeping tabs on the Houston Toad. And with only an estimated 2,000 left in Texas, this endangered species is facing its next challenge as the drought continues. More on Houston toads at http://www.houstonzoo.org/HoustonToad/
For background, see this earlier reel from TPWS on the fires at Bastrop State Park:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 