Interesting carnival of natural philosophy that I had not seen before — and Philosophia Naturalis Number 14 celebrates Sputnik. History teachers may want to visit the carnival.
This one is hosted at Dynamics of Cats, one of the Seed Empire science blogs. I regret it took so long to call it to your attention.
1 Comment | 
History, History images, Science, Space exploration, Weblogs | Tagged: blog carnivals, Philosophia Naturalis, Sputnik | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Historian David Kennedy of Stanford University attracts flack almost everywhere he writes, these days, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
A couple of years ago the neocons were angry at him for saying that America’s people are generally unconnected to America’s soldiers in Iraq, and that’s bad for policy. But a few months later when others noted exactly the same thing and issued the same call Kennedy issued to support troops, neocon pundits were quick to praise the idea they’d claimed was destructive a few weeks earlier.
Kennedy wrote a review of economist Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal, for the New York Times. It’s arcane, sure, but economist Brad DeLong at UCLA takes Kennedy to task for not understanding laissez faire economics well enough.
Academic disputes are so bitter because the stakes are so small, still.
Leave a Comment » | Economics, Free market economics, History, Politics | Tagged: David M. Kennedy, Economics, History, laissez faire economics, Paul Krugman, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Headline in this morning’s Dallas Morning News: “Texas teens lead nation in birth rate.”
The subhead: “Experts questioning abstinence-only education approach.”
What was the clue?
While the national teen birth rate has slowed, Texas has made far less headway, alarming public health officials and child advocates.
Texas teens lead the nation in having babies. Last month, the nonprofit group Child Trends conferred another No. 1 ranking on Texas. In the latest statistics available, 24 percent of the state’s teen births in 2004 were not the girl’s first delivery.
“That astounded me,” said Kathryn Allen, senior vice president for community relations at Planned Parenthood of North Texas. “I mean, what are we doing wrong?”
Texas’ policy is to deny contraceptives without parental consent wherever possible and to push an abstinence-only sex education program in public schools.
Conservatives blame liberal policies. The radical, “pregnancy is punishment from God” Eagle Forum believes success in reducing teen-aged pregnancies in other states is due to increased abortions, though there is not an iota of evidence to support such a claim.
The good news is that Texas’ teen pregnancy rates are down 19%. The bad news for Texas is that the national rates are down about 30%, and California has achieved a 47% reduction in the same period of time, by emphasizing honest sex education that teaches the use of prophylactics and by making birth control devices available to teens for free at public health clinics.
I have suffered through amazingly destructive presentations in which abstinence-only educators tell fantastic falsehoods to kids. In one presentation, the fellow started out claiming condoms are effective only 60% of the time, but got the failure rate up to 90% by the end of his talk. Kids in the school told me that they learned not to use condoms.
Where is Susan Powter when you need her rage?
Check out the good reporting by Robert T. Garrett, and tell us in comments what you conclude.
1 Comment | Accuracy, Education, Public education, Public health, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: abstinence only, failed policies, moral dilemmas, sex education, teenage pregnancy | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Yes, there really are mountains of such stark beauty, in Utah, next to civilization.
3 Comments | Geography - Physical, geology, Humor, Personal | Tagged: Ed Darrell, geography, geology, Mt. Timpanogos, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington last month had wags and pundits claiming that it is okay for politicians to lie, at least in the state of Washington.
On October 4 the Washington Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a law that banned publication of “a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office” in advertisements or other campaign materials, if the statement was made with “actual malice,” or with “reckless disregard to its truth or falsity,” according to a report in the New York Times.
“The notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter fo truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,” Justice James M. Johnson wrote for four the justices in the majority. A dissenting justice, Barbara A. Madsen, wrote that “the majority’s decision is an invitation to lie with impunity.”
Justice Madsen added that the decision would help turn “political campaigns into contests of the best stratagems of lies and deceit, to the end that honest discourse and honest candidates are lost in the maelstrom.”
Utah’s voters now are engaged in a great debate that tests those views. Can voters discern the truth from a fog of claims and counterclaims about school vouchers?
Polls show vouchers losing. What does that mean?
Ironically, perhaps, in the Washington case, the candidate who got the claim wrong, according to the court’s decision, also lost the race:
Mr. Sheldon said Ms. Rickert had violated a state law that made it unlawful to publish “a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office” in advertisements and campaign materials if the statement was made with “actual malice,” meaning in the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard to its truth or falsity.
The commission ruled against Ms. Rickert and fined her $1,000. It found that Mr. Sheldon had not voted to close the facility and that it was, in any event, a juvenile detention center rather than one for the developmentally challenged.
Justice Johnson said the law under which the commission had acted was “a censorship scheme.”
“It naïvely assumes,” Justice Johnson wrote, “that the government is capable of correctly and consistently negotiating the thin line between fact and opinion in political speech.”
Mr. Sheldon had other ways to combat the brochure, Justice Johnson added. Mr. Sheldon and his supporters could have “responded to Ms. Rickert’s false statements with the truth.” And Mr. Sheldon remained free to file a libel suit, though he would have to prove not only falsity and actual malice but also that the statement had harmed his reputation.
In a brief concurring opinion, Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander said the flaw in the law was that it penalized false “nondefamatory speech,” meaning statements that do not injure reputation. But he said the government should be free to “penalize defamatory political speech.”
The voters figured it out.
___________________________
Leave a Comment » | Education, Ethics, History, Law, Politics, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Yellowstone National Park is just a cool place. If you’re not using it for anything in your geography and U.S. history courses, you’re missing out.
Here’s a ten-minute video that the producers hope you’ll show far and wide to encourage television stations to pick up the series. It’s a ten-minute pilot for “Travelers’ Tales,” featuring outdoor writer Tim Cahill, a founder of Outside magazine, and photographer Tom Murphy.
Here are some of the points you might use in class:
The video features a lot of snow, elk, bison and coyotes, hot springs flowing into a river making swimming in January feasible, Mammoth Hot Springs and the travertine pools, and the cold northern desert of sagebrush and juniper.
Geography, not answered in the video (map or internet exercise):
Geography, answered in the video:
2 Comments | Adventure, Bell Ringers, Geography - Physical, geology, Natural history, Natural resources, Travel, Warm-up exercises | Tagged: geography, geology, Lesson plans, Tim Cahill, Travel, video, Yellowstone | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You won’t find this in your world history text.
Events in Congo trouble at so many levels. Reports in The New York Times and other places document unspeakable violence: 27,000 sexual assaults in South Kivu Province in 2006, just a fraction of the total number across the nation of 66 million people. The assaults are brutal. Women assaulted are often left so badly injured internally, they may never heal.
Map of Congo, highlighting province of Bukavu where violence against women is epidemic, from New York TimesGenocide you say? Many assaults appear to be spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in next-door Rwanda. But assaults by husbands on wives also are epidemic. Result of civil war? Then how to explain the “Rasta” gang, dreadlocked fugitives who live in the forest, wear tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys, and who commit unspeakable crimes against women and children? What nation are they from, and against whom do they fight, if anyone — and for what?
The facts cry out for action:
Surely intervention by an international group would help, no? However
Americans looking for a quick resolution to the situation in Iraq might do well to study Congo. At Congo’s independence in the 1960s, there was hope of prosperity and greater peace. Foreign intervention, including meddling from the U.S., regional civil wars, bad government and long international neglect, ate up the hope. Achieving what a nation could be is difficult, when so many forces align to prevent it from being anything other than a violent backwater. Pandora’s box resists attempts to shut it. Quick resolution is unlikely.
So the violence in Congo continues. In this world, when is the “never” in “never again?”
How many other such cases fall outside our textbooks, and off the state tests?
Resources:
2 Comments | Africa, Disasters, Economics, Genocide, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Natural resources, Politics | Tagged: Africa, Congo, Genocide, Human Rights, Politics, World history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Several years ago I found a quote attributed to business consulting guru Tom Peters, that ascribed success to hard work — if a lot of other things didn’t get in the way. I lost the quote, and the citation, and have sorely wanted to have it a hundred times since then when I found executives and administrators admonishing people for their failure to soar when the bosses themselves had anchored their employees to the ground.
Ah, the Glories of Google! I have found it again. Turns out it’s not Tom Peters after all; he quotes a passage from novelist Ann Beattie’s novel, Picturing Will.
It’s still worthy of noting; here is an excerpt from a Tom Peters column in 1990 featuring the passage:
“Do everything right, all the time, and the child will prosper. It’s as simple as that, except for fate, luck, heredity, chance, the astrological sign under which the child was born, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war that is being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try once or too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he becomes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, ironic perspective, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstance, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies.”
The quote is from Ann Beattie’s latest novel, Picturing Will. It speaks directly to an increasingly important corporate issue — the peril of overestimating our ability to influence outcomes. In short, the way we recruit, organize, plan and act very much depends on how much we feel that we are in control. The problem is ageless, though as the world becomes less predictable the consequences of personal or corporate hubris are increasingly severe.
Systematically review a stack of annual reports. Without fail, a good year is explained as “the fruits of the strategic planning process your management put in place five (three, seven) years ago.” A bad year, however, is invariably the result of “the unanticipated rise in interest rates (unexpected foreign competition, etc.) which upset our planning assumptions.” But our corporate chiefs are hardly alone. A sizable branch of psychology, called attribution theory, examines the way human beings explain events to themselves. In short, we attribute good outcomes to skill and hard work; bad ones to bad luck.
For centuries, Cartesian cause and effect thinking has dominated our science — and management — paradigms. The causeless, effectless, probabilistic world of quantum mechanics that informs today’s scientific thought has still not permeated our psyches — or our approach to making corporate strategy.
Beattie’s novel is listed as an academic selection now, by Random House. Do you, or does anyone at your school, use this book?
3 Comments | Best practices, Books, Business, Business Ethics, Education success, Literature, Quotes | Tagged: Ann Beattie, Business, Education, Quotes, success, Tom Peters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, (House of Anansi Press, 2004) (Carroll and Graf, 2005)
(This book resulted from Ronald Wright’s 2004 lectures in the famous Canadian series, the Massey Lectures. The lectures are broadcast on radio by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), whose website features an excerpt from the Wright lectures. You may get a podcast of Wright’s lecture 1, here; and lecture 2, here. Wright suggests that, after 10,000 years of experimenting with civilization, generally leading to failure, we have a chance to get things right, now, if we act wisely. “It describes in particular how four historical civilisations – those of Easter Island, Sumer, the Maya and Rome – self-destructed due to a lack of foresight and to wrong choices. Wright argues ‘each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.'” Martin Scorsese is developing the movie rights.)
Wright’s use of the phrase is the earliest I’ve been able to document quickly; but it’s a popular phrase now. Please note in comments if you know of an earlier use that can be tracked down.
1 Comment | Disasters, Environmental protection, History, Lessons of history, Quotes, Santayana's ghost | Tagged: disaster, Environmental protection, History, price of history, Ronald Wright, Santayana's ghost | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Did you ever wonder when the term “terrorism” first appeared, and against what terror it was aimed?
George Bush and Dick Cheney will not like the answer. François Furstenberg gives the history of the term in an opposite-editorial page piece in the New York Times, “Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons.”
Here’s a hint: The phrase referred to governmental the ruling party’s actions against its own people, originally.
Furstenberg is a professor of history at the University of Montreal, and a scholar of George Washington.
3 Comments | French Revolution, History, Iraq, War on Terrorism, Words | Tagged: etymology, History, Politics, Terrorism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
At the same time the Cleveland Plain Dealer defended inaccurate history in flag-folding ceremonies, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced it would allow inaccurate ceremonies, if the family of the departed veteran requests it, and if the family provides the script. Here’s the news from the Akron Beacon-Journal.
Scripts must still adhere to standards that prohibit racism, obscenity, or political partisanship.
2 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, First Amendment, History, Patriotism, Voodoo history | Tagged: Flag etiquette, Patriotism, Religion, veterans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
My brothers in journalism at the usually sensible Cleveland Plain Dealer have lost their journalistic senses.
In an editorial this morning, the paper supports, defends and calls for the reinstatement of the inaccurate, insulting and embarrassing flag folding script that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemeteries finally, belatedly but justly, stopped promulgating a few weeks ago.
In the words of the Plain Dealer:
Those are not just folds in a meaningless fabric or empty words spoken at the grave site. They represent honor, continuity with the past, traditions to be preserved, even when some of the words may quietly be set aside for families who wish a different approach.
America’s military men and women put on the line not just life and limb, but often precious time with their children, higher pay or easier jobs, help to a spouse or an aging parent. They do so to serve their country. Their recompense when they get home is a veterans system at best struggling to meet crescendoing needs for medical, rehabilitative and psychiatric care – and now with a tin ear for what matters.
Except that they ARE meaningless words in the script, violative of tradition and law, historically inaccurate, and insulting to the memory of patriots like George Washington. They do not honor the past, portraying a false past instead. The ceremony is not traditional, having been written only in the past three decades or so. The script departs radically from the historic path of America’s patriots, defending freedom without regard to profession of faith.
Christians, Jews, Moslems, atheists and others put their lives on the line to defend this nation. They didn’t ask that their memories be fogged with silly and historically inaccurate glop.
The Air Force has a flag folding script that does not bend history or assault anyone’s religion. If someone wants to use a ceremony, why not that one? The accurate, Air Force version honors America’s veterans:
Traditionally, a symbol of liberty, the American flag has carried the message of freedom, and inspired Americans, both at home and abroad.
In 1814, Francis Scott Key was so moved at seeing the Stars and Stripes waving after the British shelling of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry that he wrote the words to “The Star Spangled Banner.”
In 1892, the flag inspired Francis Bellamy to write the “Pledge of Allegiance,” our most famous flag salute and patriotic oath.
In July 1969, the American flag was “flown” in space when Neil Armstrong planted it on the surface of the moon.
Why does the Plain Dealer choose a religious screed that insults history over a script that accurately honors all of America’s veterans?
The full text of the newer, accurate ceremony is below the fold.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Flag etiquette, Patriotism, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Separation of church and state, Voodoo history | Tagged: Bogus history, Flag etiquette, flag folding ceremony, History, Religion | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
David McCullough might answer that question this way:
In conclusion I want to share a scene that took place on the last day of the year of 1776, Dec. 31. All the enlistments for the entire army were up. Every soldier, because of the system at the time, was free to go home as of the first day of January 1777. Washington called a large part of the troops out into formation. He appeared in front of these ragged men on his horse, and he urged them to reenlist. He said that if they would sign up for another six months, he’d give them a bonus of 10 dollars. It was an enormous amount then because that’s about what they were being paid for a month—if and when they could get paid. These were men who were desperate for pay of any kind. Their families were starving.
The drums rolled, and he asked those who would stay on to step forward. The drums kept rolling, and nobody stepped forward. Washington turned and rode away from them. Then he stopped, and he turned back and rode up to them again. This is what we know he said:
My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.3
Again the drums rolled. This time the men began stepping forward. “God Almighty,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew.”4
Now that is an amazing scene, to say the least, and it’s real. This wasn’t some contrivance of a screenwriter. However, I believe there is something very familiar about what Washington said to those troops. It was as if he was saying, “You are fortunate. You have a chance to serve your country in a way that nobody else is going to be able to, and everybody else is going to be jealous of you, and you will count this the most important decision and the most valuable service of your lives.” Now doesn’t that have a familiar ring? Isn’t it very like the speech of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here”?5 Washington loved the theater; Washington loved Shakespeare. I can’t help but feel that he was greatly influenced.
He was also greatly influenced, as they all were, by the classical ideals of the Romans and the Greeks. The history they read was the history of Greece and Rome. And while Washington and Knox and Greene, not being educated men, didn’t read Greek and Latin as Adams and Jefferson did, they knew the play Cato, and they knew about Cincinnatus. They knew that Cincinnatus had stepped forward to save his country in its hour of peril and then, after the war was over, returned to the farm. Washington, the political general, had never forgotten that Congress was boss. When the war was at last over, Washington, in one of the most important events in our entire history, turned back his command to Congress—a scene portrayed in a magnificent painting by John Trumbull that hangs in the rotunda of our national Capitol. When George III heard that George Washington might do this, he said that “if he does, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
So what does this tell us? That the original decision of the Continental Congress was the wise one. They knew the man, they knew his character, and he lived up to his reputation.
I hope very much that those of you who are studying history here will pursue it avidly, with diligence, with attention. I hope you do this not just because it will make you a better citizen, and it will; not just because you will learn a great deal about human nature and about cause and effect in your own lives, as well as the life of the nation, which you will; but as a source of strength, as an example of how to conduct yourself in difficult times—and we live in very difficult times, very uncertain times. But I hope you also find history to be a source of pleasure. Read history for pleasure as you would read a great novel or poetry or go to see a great play.
And I hope when you read about the American Revolution and the reality of those people that you will never think of them again as just figures in a costume pageant or as gods. They were not perfect; they were imperfect—that’s what’s so miraculous. They rose to the occasion as very few generations ever have.
David McCullough, from a speech delivered at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, on September 27, 2005, “The Glorious Cause of America.”
Do your students know that speech from Henry V? Do your students know the story of Cincinnatus?
Leave a Comment » | 1776, America's founding, Famous quotes, George Washington, History, Literature | Tagged: character, Education, George Washington, History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Barack Obama is a Christian, a Protestant.
Hillary Clinton met with the Gold Star Mothers, and the Gold Star Mothers were happy with the meeting.
But I’ll bet you get an e-mail soon saying otherwise.
Read it, and be inoculated with the facts, against the hoaxes.
1 Comment | Accuracy, Hoaxes, Politics, Voodoo history | Tagged: Clinton, hoax, Obama, Politics, right-wing smear | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Old hoaxes never die. Sometimes they don’t even fade away (making it certain that they are less honorable than any soldier).
Folding the flag by an Air Force color guard at Arlington National Cemetery; photo by Arlington National Cemetery
The right wing whine machine is working up a dudgeon because National Cemeteries now have a policy against use of a flag- and history-insulting script that ascribes all sorts of hoakum to the simple folding of the American flag at funerals — a ceremony which is touching and sobering when done as a military color guard does it in silence, as they are trained.
A blog named headsup explains most of the issues, with a few links, at “Keep opinion to self.”
Regular readers recognize the issue. Fillmore’s Bathtub explained how the discontinued ceremony butchered history, how some people clung to the old ceremony, and how the Air Force devised a more accurate ceremony to use if color guards are asked.
People who sow strife for a living never let facts get in the way of a good dudgeon.
Were this worthy of controversy, it should have been controversial months ago. The “folding ceremony” in contention was never official, and was rarely used. Do your own survey of veterans’ funerals to see; I have never heard of the ceremony actually used. We have the DFW National Cemetery within a few miles of our home. I regularly visit with veterans, and I have attended ceremonies myself. Don’t take my word for it.
Stick to the Flag Code and the Constitution, and no one will get hurt.
Michelle Malkin? Any other wacko commentators who don’t know the Flag Code? Get a clue. Remedial history is calling you. Please get off the soap boxes. Please quit using the U.S. flag to cover your gluteus maximii.
It’s time to stand up for accuracy, for real history, and for the law. Honor the flag by following the rules, not by dressing in it, or dragging it through the mud for ratings points.
Dishonor Roll:
Honor Roll:
2 Comments | Bogus history, Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, History, U.S. Constitution, Voodoo history | Tagged: First Amendment, Flag ceremony, flag desecration, Flag etiquette, Politics, Religion, Voodoo history | 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 
