typewriter, originally uploaded by blueblythemonster.
Don’t have an antique Underwood? Make your own. That’s what Blythe Church did.
Her typewriter will never be used to write a novel, but it’s novel enough on its own to merit a look. It’s made from custom-dyed felt, and embroidery.
A soft answer turneth away wrath? Here’s your source of soft words, then, eh?
You can see other works by Ms. Church at her website.
2 Comments | 
Art, Humor, Technology, Typewriters | Tagged: Art, Humor, Technology, Typewriters | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Rev. Michael Dowd has a book out, ThankGod for Evolution, and he wrote an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News on July 1 (as I understand it — wasn’t in Dallas that day).
I don’t vouch for the book — yet, at least. I’ve not read it. I find the study of science, and especially of evolution, offers no barrier to my faith, nor does my faith offer any barrier to my study of science. My faith, which requires an ethical life, offers barriers to creationism — a subject of other posts. But thank God for Charles Darwin? Sure.
“Thank God for Charles Darwin.” T-shirt design from Redbubble
We also need to thank the federal courts, where the First Amendment is enforced, keeping unreasonable fables from diluting science education in public schools.
Watch that suit.
Rev. Dowd’s essay, courtesy of Sam Hodges and the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog, below the fold.
5 Comments | Biology, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, Public education, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state, State school boards, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Education Agency (TEA) | Tagged: Charles Darwin, Creationism, Evolution, Religion, Science, Texas, Texas Education Agency | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Three decades out of Utah, who could have seen this coming?
Utah beer brewers make good beer, and they have a wicked sense of humor. Yes, that’s “Provo Girl,” as in the town where the LDS Church’s Brigham Young University calls home. And that winsome woman is smiling before Bridal Veil Falls of Provo Canyon. Let’s just say there’s a lot of history in that drawing.
Face it, brewing beer in a Mormon-dominated state is spitting into the wind anyway (Mormons don’t drink beer, for religious reasons).
Brewers must make money from non-Mormons, and from tourists. Maybe that explains the proliferation of labels that rather stick it to the local religious authorities. Humor seems to be a favored marketing device.
Other labels to watch for :
6 Comments | Food history, Humor, Travel | Tagged: Beer, food, Humor, Provo Girl, Travel, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Instapundit loves to roil waters, but he’s low on content, and everytime I see it, low on accuracy, too.
This is the entirety of Glenn Beck’sReynolds’s post linking to the rabidly anti-Rachel Carson, RWDB with a rant about DDT that lacks several key points of accuracy:
THE HIGH COST OF fighting malaria.
Six words and he’s wrong already. That’s quite a skill to be dead wrong in six words.
Our friend, Mr. Beck, at RWDB, has a news report from Uganda, and rather than note it and check for accuracy, he uses it as a tee for numerous shots and mulligans against science, scientists, environmentalists, health care workers, the EU, and anyone else who inhabited his latest delerium.
The story out of Africa is that a buyer of organic cotton refused to buy Ugandan cotton due to DDT contamination. True to the line of recent events, it’s not environmentalists who do anything , though the news story finds a way to blame them in the last paragraph. Instead, it’s a businessman.
But here are problems with the story:
Are we to believe that marauding anti-insect people roam Uganda, forcing farmers to steal DDT from health authorities and spray it on their cotton instead, against the farmer’s better interests?
Neither Glenn BeckReynolds at Instapundit nor the other Beck at RWDB bothered to check the facts, nor even to see whether the first face story passes the smell test. Where would DDT contamination come from? Why would a buyer refuse cotton if there’s no DDT contaminant? Why wouldn’t there be tests? Where are the test results? If EU is so down on DDT on cotton, where is the document that says so?
The company in the news story, ineptly named as it is, Bo-Weevil, does exist, it appears, either there or in the Netherlands. That surely is not the only cotton buyer for the EU. The first BoWeevil isn’t an EU company, since it’s headquartered in Tennessee. From their website:
Welcome to Bo-Weevil Eco Sportswear Mfg. LLC., nestled in the hills of Tazewell, Tennessee.
Producers of the most earth friendly clothing on the planet.
Bo-Weevil Eco started manufacturing and supplying clothing with one main vision: “Provide our customers with the highest quality clothing that integrates current fashions with timeless style, to create lifestyle clothing that brings awareness to care what you wear.”
We are a company that practices to restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony. Doing so by being at the forefront of U.S.A. factories producing a line of women’s, men’s, kids and k-9 apparel made by pre-consumer recycled fibres. We are working to create change in the textile industry; to offer one step on the path to more sensible and sustainable use of resources in the production of basic commodities.
So, how does the EU get into this story at all? The second company, I can find listed only through a post at Pesticide Action Network, a source that is not always reliable on such issues.
Smell test: Does this sound accurate to you? When was the last time you saw anyone at Wal-Mart demand organic cotton?
The use of DDT has now affected cotton prices in the region. Patrick Oryang from Lango Cooperative told All Africa, “We are buying cotton at sh500 per kilogram instead of sh750. The country will lose about US$20 million because EUREP-GAP, an EU exporters body, has suspended buying products from the region because the consumers in Europe and America want purely organic products.”
What’s the real story?
Neither Beck nor Reynolds seems to care. They get a dig at environmentalists, so what if Ugandans get malaria?
Update, sorta: News from Uganda, in New Vision, seems to indicate that the EU has okayed the wise use of DDT in Uganda, contrary to claims of an EU ban (July 10 story). You can’t help but wish there were some good, clear reporting of this issue, from BBC or Reuters, or someone in Kampala besides these few, shallow news dailies.
12 Comments | Africa, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Science | Tagged: Africa, Business, DDT, Environmental protection, EU, Rachel Carson, Science, Uganda | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Fireworks on the Mall, Washington, D.C.
July 4, 2006
Iwo Jima Memorial in the foreground; Washington Monument in background
1 Comment | Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, Patriotism | Tagged: Flag etiquette, Fourth of July, Patriotism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
1 Comment | Family, Personal | Tagged: Birthday, Family, Fourth of July, Point of personal privilege | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Remember to fly the flag on July 4, 2008, the 232nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. (Postcard above, from 1907, from collection of James R. Heintze)
Flags may be flown sun-up to sun-down. The U.S. flag should be run up the pole quickly, and be left to fly unfettered in the breeze. The flag may be left flying after sundown, if it is lighted.
Resources:
Leave a Comment » | Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, Freedom - Political, History, History and art, History images, Patriotism | Tagged: Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, Fourht of July, Fourth of July, History, Patriotism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Yes, it’s Hunter Thompson. Yes, it’s an IBM Selectric. No, I don’t have any other information on this photograph.
5 Comments | Technology, Typewriters | Tagged: Hunter S. Thompson, Senseless Violence, Technology, typewriter | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Battery died in the camera — photos sometime later this week, after I charge the batteries, and if I can get back to a place to post (how wired is Southern Utah?).
But with all the great food we’ve eaten in Salt Lake City today, it’s worth noting that we go the best sushi in the U.S. at Takashi, on Market Street. Two hours of sumptuous, eye-opening dining.
First day of the trip and we get a U.S. best. What a great start!
5 Comments | History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Again at Café Philos, the anti-Darwin fifth columnists do their best to continue distortions of history, in this case, in high irony, claiming NOT to defend John Freshwater.
Not in defense of Freshwater’s walking over the Constitution and zapping burns on students in the shape of a cross? Why bother to go after Darwin? No explanation is necessary. It’s like the story of the frog and the scorpion. Creationists are like scorpions. It’s in their nature. (I believe it is a corruption of human nature that creationism visits on those who allow the demon in.) (“Paging Bobby Jindal! Creationist Demon Possession in the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion; what? You’re already there? When’s the exorcism this time?”)
In a cartoon, Darwin bans “Laissez faire,” a shorthand for “Social Darwinism,” and eugenics from his house. Unknown cartoonist, from a short essay on Northwestern University’s discussion book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, by David Quammen.
Here’s the exchange. If you find it boring, my apologies. I do weary at the prospect of having to do this again, and again. On the crashed hard-drive of my first laptop, I have files now 15 years old discussing this same silly claim. I’m posting here for the record, for my easy reference, with hope that someday it will not be necessary to post this stuff at all. You may need some of these links some day, and here they are, below the fold.
23 Comments | Accuracy, Books, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, History, Racism, Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, Rampant stupidity, Science, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
[2008] Today’s the 52nd anniversary of a horrendous accident in the air over the Grand Canyon. Two airliners collided, and 128 people died.
In 1956 there was no national radar system. When commercial flights left airports, often the only contact they had with any form of air traffic control was when the pilots radioed in for weather information, or for landing instructions. Especially there was no system to avoid collisions. As this 2006 story in the Deseret News (Salt Lake City) relates, the modern air traffic control system was spurred mightily by this tragedy.
About 9 a.m. Saturday, June 30, [1956], the TWA flight bound for Kansas City, Mo., and the United flight bound for Chicago left Los Angeles International Airport within three minutes of each other. The TWA flight, carrying 70 people, filed a flight plan to cruise at 19,000 feet. The United flight, with 58 people on board, planned to cruise at 21,000 feet.
About 20 minutes into the flight, TWA pilot Capt. Jack Gandy requested permission to climb to 21,000 feet. An air traffic controller in Salt Lake City turned down Gandy’s request. Then Gandy asked to fly “1,000 on top,” meaning at least a thousand feet above the clouds, which that morning were billowing as high as 30,000 feet. That request was granted.
By the time both planes were over the Grand Canyon, the pilots were flying in and out of the clouds, on visual flight rules and off their prescribed flight plans, apparently typical in those days as pilots veered off course to play tour guide.
No one knows exactly what happened.
It was the last big accident before instigation of the “black box,” so investigators had to piece together details from debris on the ground.
They decided that the left wing and propeller of the United plane hit the center fin of the TWA’s tail and cut through the fuselage, sending Flight 2 nose-first into the canyon, two miles south of the juncture of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. The United DC- 7, which had lost most of its left wing, began spiraling down. Capt. Robert Shirley radioed Salt Lake City a garbled message that controllers understood only after they slowed down the recording: “Salt Lake, ah, 718 . . . we are going in.” Flight 718 smashed into a cliff on Chuar Butte.
The accident plays a key role in a Tony Hillerman mystery, Skeleton Man — Hillerman writes about two Navajo Nation policemen.
I’m thinking of the crash today for two reasons. I’m off for a tour of canyons, including both rims of the Grand Canyon, in the next two weeks. The last time I was there was 1986, with the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors. We flew in on a Twin Otter, coming up from Phoenix, over the Roosevelt Dam, up over the Mogollon Rim, over the Glen Canyon Recreation area and stopping it Page. From Page to Grand Canyon, we took full advantage of the huge windows in the Otter — seeing first hand the sights that the controversial tourist flights were designed to reveal. Safety was a key concern, and we talked about it constantly with the pilots.
A few weeks later, on June 18, 1986, that DeHavilland Twin Otter collided with a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter over the Canyon. 25 people died in that crash.
I have flown over the Canyon a dozen times since then — no longer will airliners dip down to give passengers a better view, not least because airliners cruise tens of thousands of feet higher now than they did then. I think of those airplane accidents every time I see the Canyon.
We’re driving in. We’ll spend a day and a half on the South Rim, and another couple of nights on the North Rim. We’re taking our time on the ground. But if we had time, and we could afford it, I’d love to get up in an airplane or helicopter to see the Canyon from the air again.
7 Comments | Airplanes, Disasters, History, Transportation, Travel | Tagged: airplane crash, Aviation, Disasters, Grand Canyon, History, Transportation, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
An ISP called Toast.net has an interactive Independence Day Quiz — feeling patriotic? Go see how your knowledge of U.S. history and lore stacks up against others. The questions are very good, really.
Remember to fly your flag on the 4th of July!
2 Comments | 1776, Education, History | Tagged: 4th of July, History, Patriotism, Quiz | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I love the headline: “Anti-science law signed by Louisiana’s exorcist governor.”
Tony Whitson’s quick analysis is good, too.
One might begin to think Louisiana really is cursed. Katrina, Rita, other political troubles — and then they elect the bright, young reformer as governor, and he turns out to be a voodoo history and voodoo science practitioner — heck, maybe he practices just plain old voodoo.
All this comes at a time when it may have saved John McCain from making a mistake that would make George McGovern’s selection of Tom Eagleton look like wisdom of the ages (when news came out that Eagleton had undergone convulsive shock therapy for depression, he was replaced on the ticket by Sargent Shriver, but not after much damage had been done to the credibility and viability of the McGovern campaign — why Nixon thought it necessary to sponsor burglary to defeat this ticket is one of the mysteries of the ages of Shakespearian tragedy come to life in in American politics).
Mind you, I like and respect McGovern, and I found working with Tom Eagleton on the Senate Labor Committee a great joy.
Leave a Comment » | Campaigns, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, Politics, Science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: 2008 campaign, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
World history and geography teachers take note: This site, Chat and Chai, has an interesting slide show of what appear to be stereoscope and post card photos from India, 100 years ago. The link may be useful for on-line demonstrations — you may be able to use the images in other presentations.
The slides show people in a lot of everyday activities, providing good, visual examples of how people lived then. An instructive comparison: Can your students find photos of Indians carrying out similar activities today? How has India changed, for how much of its population? I suspect you can find cases where Some Indians have leaped into the 21st century, and other examples where the lives of many millions of people have not changed all that much.
Several of the photos remind that they were taken 40 years or more before India won independence from Britain. These may pertain to discussions of empires and imperialism, and other economic issues, too.
One commenter asked the blogger to share the slides, but I don’t see a positive response.
Don’t ask me to explain the music the blogger selected for the slides.
Here is the actual slide show.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Leave a Comment » | Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, History images, World history | Tagged: Education, India, World history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
In the end, Dr. James Dobson and other ideological Christians may be the worst enemies of the idea that intelligent design should be taught as science. They just can’t resist emphasizing that ID is, to them, good Christian doctrine.
In the latest outbreak, the New Zealand chapter of Dobson’s group Focus on the Family has sent copies of the DVD, “The Privileged Planet,” to 400 New Zealand high schools. Why?
Focus on the Family’s executive director Tim Sisarich said the material was intended to expose pupils to an alterative theory of cosmology.
“We’re a Christian organisation so we believe that God made the planet and God made the cosmos … Science takes a theory and tries to establish it as the truth, and that’s all this is.”
Education Ministry senior manager Mary Chamberlain said parents had a right to withdraw children from religious instruction.
This undercuts the lobby group, Discovery Institute (DI), which argues that intelligent design should be considered good science and not religiously related. The DVD in question features an intelligent design advocate, Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in 2007 — in that flap, DI argued that the DVD was good science, not religion.
Creationism does tend to require being flexible on the truth. When fundraising, or when trying to defend Christian ideas, intelligent design is Christian doctrine. When DI and others are trying to sneak ID into science curricula in the U.S., it’s not religion at all, but scientifically related.
Treating subjects in that fashion is a form of moral relativism, or to most people, simple dishonesty.
(The discussion at the site of the Dominion Post is quite lively; see what New Zealanders think of intelligent design.)
Tip of the old scrub brush to Dr. Bumsted at Grassroots Science.
Update: P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula was already on it. Morris, Minnesota is just such a hub of scientific activity, it’s difficult to stay ahead of Dr. Myers when we’re stuck here in what appears to be the scientific backwater of Dallas.
13 Comments | Creationism, Education, Intelligent Design, Politics, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state | Tagged: Creationism, Education, Intelligent Design, Politics, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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 
