A religious bias against good education?

August 8, 2007

One might be too stunned to shake one’s head; this is a description for a high school calculus course:

CALCULUS
Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. Mathematical study will result in a greater appreciation of God and His works in creation. The students will understand the basic ideas of both differential and integral calculus and its importance and historical applications. The students will recognize that God created our minds to be able to see that the universe can be calculated by mental methods.

No, I’m not kidding. It’s from Castle Hills First Baptist School in San Antonio, Texas.

The scientist who sent me the link called it “God’s math.” Architect Mies van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details.” But he didn’t mean that math should be taught as anything other than mathematics. He didn’t mean that any religion should be inserted into math classes — and frankly, that’s a little worrying to me. I speak regularly with theologians who read the same text and come up with radically different descriptions of what it means, sometimes diametrically opposite descriptions.

The social studies curricula are more troubling. What is described is at best second-rate course work. One hopes that the teachers teach the material instead of these descriptions:

SOCIAL STUDIES/HISTORY

WORLD HISTORY I
NINTH GRADE
The students will examine the nature of God as revealed through the study of social studies. Students will develop convictions about God’s word as it relates to world history and will define their responses to it. Through the study of world history, students will develop an understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural developments of our world, as they compare countries and civilizations, Students will learn and acquire an appreciation for God’s relations throughout the timeline of world events. The integration of literature into studies of ancient civilizations will enhance and inspire their learning process. Students will develop attitudes, values, and skills as they discover their place in the world. Students will analyze, synthesize and evaluate social studies skills, including social relationships such as family and church.

WORLD HISTORY II
TENTH GRADE
The students will examine the nature of God as revealed through the study of social studies. Students will develop convictions about God’s word as it relates to world history and will define their responses to it. Through the study of world history, students will develop an understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural developments of our world, as they compare countries and civilizations since the Reformation. Students will learn and acquire an appreciation for God’s relations throughout the timeline of world events. The integration of literature into the studies of modern civilizations will enhance and inspire their learning process. Students will develop attitudes, values, and skills as they discover their place in the world. Students will analyze, synthesize and evaluate social studies skills, including social relationships such as family and church.


AMERICAN HISTORY
ELEVENTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the history of our country beginning with the Civil War with a biblically integrated filter as they examine the political, social, and economic perspectives. An emphasis will be placed on the major wars, the industrial revolution, and the settlement of the frontier, requiring students to critically analyze the cause and effect relationships of events in history.

GOVERNMENT/CIVICS
TWELFTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the foundational documents of our founding Fathers built upon as they formulated the ideals upon which our country was established. Such documents include: The Magna Carta, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Mayflower Compact. Students are equipped with an understanding of the basic principles contained in these documents, and are able to identify their dependence upon biblical and Reformation principles, leading them to an understanding why the American system is meant for a religious people.

ECONOMICS/FREE ENTERPRISE
TWELFTH GRADE

Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will gain an understanding of the workings of economic systems, being able to identify the strengths and weaknesses inherent in capitalism (Deuteronomy 8, 15, 28, Leviticus 25), and the reasons for its superiority to the models of communism and socialism (Ezekiel 46:18).

The last description there, for economics, might lead one to understand this school ignores most of the lessons of Jesus, and especially the stories of the disciples in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion as described in Acts 2. Not only are the courses described inadequate (we hope the teachers teach the state standards instead, at least), where scripture is specifically mentioned, they appear to be tortured to fit the agenda.

Then comes the choker:

SCIENCE

BIOLOGY

Students will study the physical life of God’s creation. They will continue to develop skills in the use of the scientific method. The students will learn methods and techniques of scientific study, general attributes of the cell and its processes, characteristics of the wide spectrum of living organisms, the classification, similarities and differences of the five kingdoms, evolutionary models and the creation model, the mechanics of inheritance, disease and disorders, and the workings of the human body. Students will gain experience in manipulating the conditions of a laboratory investigation and in evaluating the applications of biological principles in everyday life.

There is no “creation model” that is scientific, nor is there one that conflicts with evolution and is also Biblical. What, in God’s name, are they teaching?

CHFB School was established over 25 years ago, and claims to have more than 300 students enrolled, K-12. Surely there is a track record to look at.

Anybody know what the actual curricula look like at this school? Are there any measures to suggest the school teaches real subjects instead of what is described?

What was the Texas legislature thinking when they authorized Bible classes? Isn’t this bad enough as it is?

____________________

Update: See parent and student comments and ratings of the school, here.

____________________

Update, August 11:  Blogs4Brownback endorses the curriculum — if you do not fully realize the significance of that particular endorsement, study this post, and this one.  Parody?  I asked Brownback’s campaign about the site — they have not disowned it.  As Dave Barry often wrote, I could not make this stuff up.

72 Comments | Curricula, Economics, Education, History, History Revisionism, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Freakonomics moved

August 8, 2007

Stephen J. Dubner talks about the move of the blog to the New York Times site.  The old Freakonomics site still works, is revised, and links to the new blog home.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education, Lesson plans, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Toldja

August 8, 2007

Remember the earlier post on this?

Flight patters, from Aaron Koblin Design|Media Arts

Robert Krulwich at ABC thought it was neat, too — see this video, and you can see the artist who created the maps. Does this mean there will be more?

1 Comment | Brain learning, Creativity, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Maps, Presentations, Technology, Transportation | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Serious indictment of media fetishes . . .

August 8, 2007

 . . . that will drive the “mainstream media (MSM)” critics to distraction.  Are we sure it’s a good idea to let Rupert Murdoch own the Wall Street Journal?

Orcinus tells conservative commentators to grow up:

Remember the fuss over Jet Pilot Action Figure Bush’s “package”? Damn fool didn’t loosen his straps before getting out of the jet. Nobody else on the deck had his crotch trussed up like a Christmas goose; and to them, he looked like a rookie idiot. But Chris Matthews practically had an orgasm on-air while watching him prance and strut.) The fact that so many mainstream and conservative media guys are suckered by this posturing shows that they don’t really have a clue about what a Real Man looks like — though, somewhere deep down inside, they’re pretty sure they don’t qualify. That’s why they’re so easily wowed by men who can put on the costume and make it look good.

But they’re even more easily cowed by men who can actually fill the boots. John Kerry. John McCain. Colin Powell. Bill Clinton. (You don’t have to agree with their politics; but nobody can say these men haven’t comfortably worn the full measure of male power and responsibility for some critical stretch of their lives.) Like little boys, the media guys are so awed by the outward forms of masculinity that they eagerly make a fetish out of them; but they also actively fear and resent men who display the authentic internal goods that make an honest-to-God man. These guys’ very presence incites such a strong sense of personal inadequacy that the Boys On The Bus can only resort to attacking them in ways that are openly calculated to feminize them — that is, to bring them down to their own level. He look French. He’s whipped by his powerful wife. He’s preoccupied with his hair. Translation: This guy has more balls and more maturity than we do — and we need to take him down before everybody figures out how inadequate that makes us feel.

And this:

 . . . the first rule of real macho was that those who possess it never need to prove it to anyone. If you have to prove it or put it out on display, you don’t have it in the first place. And if you are intimidated by seeing it in others, you aren’t even in the ballpark. The truth of that should come home to all of us every time we hear an MSM or conservative talking head going on in breathless awe about some public figure’s “manhood,” or asking leering, creepy questions about other people’s sex lives.

In a time when we need thought leaders who can help us sort out the issues and navigate the national crisis, we’ve got a media staffed by sniggering, leering first-graders who exhibit every regressive intellectual, moral, emotional, and sexual characteristic of right-wing authoritarian followers. It’s time to clean house — and to demand new media voices who aren’t in business to make fun of the grownups, or shamed by people who show the attributes of true maturity and power. It’s time to send the scared little boys home, and put some authentic adults in charge.

1 Comment | Current History, Heroes, History, Leadership, Newspapers, Politics, Radio, Reason, Television, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

August 7, 1964: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

August 7, 2007

August 7 is the 43rd anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the resolution which authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to move troops into South Vietnam to defend U.S. interests.

The resolution passed Congress after what appeared to be attacks on two U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.  At the time, and now, evidence is weak that such attacks took place.

Santayana’s ghost looks on in wonder.

Leave a Comment » | History, Lyndon B. Johnson, Presidents, U.S. Constitution, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, Vietnam, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Structurally deficient bridges in your state? See this cool tool

August 7, 2007

How does your state rank in terms of “structurally deficient bridges?” You can get a per capita report and comparison at this site chock full of statistics comparing states: Statemaster.com.

 

Rank States Amount (top to bottom)
#1 Oklahoma: 21.331 per 10,000 people  
#2 Iowa: 17.965 per 10,000 people  
#3 Nebraska: 14.828 per 10,000 people  
#4 South Dakota: 13.493 per 10,000 people  
#5 North Dakota: 13.021 per 10,000 people  
#6 Mississippi: 12.67 per 10,000 people  
#7 Kansas: 12.038 per 10,000 people  
#8 Missouri: 9.094 per 10,000 people  
#9 Wyoming: 8.266 per 10,000 people  
#10 Vermont: 7.881 per 10,000 people  
#11 Montana: 6.231 per 10,000 people  
#12 West Virginia: 5.95 per 10,000 people  
#13 Alabama: 5.678 per 10,000 people  
#14 Louisiana: 4.908 per 10,000 people  
#15 Arkansas: 4.904 per 10,000 people  
#16 Pennsylvania: 4.404 per 10,000 people  
#17 Indiana: 3.366 per 10,000 people  
#18 Wisconsin: 3.183 per 10,000 people  
#19 South Carolina: 2.914 per 10,000 people  
#20 Kentucky: 2.815 per 10,000 people  
#21 New Hampshire: 2.802 per 10,000 people  
#22 Tennessee: 2.772 per 10,000 people  
#23 Maine: 2.762 per 10,000 people  
#24 North Carolina: 2.724 per 10,000 people  
#25 Ohio: 2.712 per 10,000 people  
#26 Minnesota: 2.283 per 10,000 people  
#27 Alaska: 2.17 per 10,000 people  
#28 Idaho: 2.148 per 10,000 people  
#29 New Mexico: 2.012 per 10,000 people  
#30 Illinois: 1.913 per 10,000 people  
#31 Michigan: 1.789 per 10,000 people  
#32 Rhode Island: 1.775 per 10,000 people  
#33 Oregon: 1.541 per 10,000 people  
#34 Virginia: 1.534 per 10,000 people  
#35 Georgia: 1.432 per 10,000 people  
#36 Hawaii: 1.216 per 10,000 people  
#37 Texas: 1.215 per 10,000 people  
#38 New York: 1.16 per 10,000 people  
#39 Utah: 1.093 per 10,000 people  
#40 New Jersey: 0.98 per 10,000 people  
#41 Massachusetts: 0.975 per 10,000 people  
#42 Connecticut: 0.966 per 10,000 people  
#43 Colorado: 0.855 per 10,000 people  
#44 California: 0.805 per 10,000 people  
#45 Maryland: 0.745 per 10,000 people  
#46 Washington: 0.693 per 10,000 people  
#47 Delaware: 0.498 per 10,000 people  
#48 District of Columbia: 0.345 per 10,000 people  
#49 Arizona: 0.286 per 10,000 people  
#50 Nevada: 0.257 per 10,000 people  
#51 Florida: 0.178 per 10,000 people  
  Weighted average: 4.3 per 10,000 people  

DEFINITION: Number of bridges which are structurally deficient. Per capita figures expressed per 10,000 population.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, National Bridge Inventory: Deficient Bridges by State and Highway System, Washington, DC: 2004 via StateMaster

This site has oodles and oodles of great statistics, and a few tools to pull them out and compare. I have not even scratched the surface of utility for the site.

Welcome to StateMaster, a unique statistical database which allows you to research and compare a multitude of different data on US states. We have compiled information from various primary sources such as the US Census Bureau, the FBI, and the National Center for Educational Statistics. More than just a mere collection of various data, StateMaster goes beyond the numbers to provide you with visualization technology like pie charts, maps, graphs and scatterplots. We also have thousands of map and flag images, state profiles, and correlations.

We have stats on everything from toothless residents to percentage of carpoolers. Our database is increasing all the time, so be sure to check back with us regularly.

If you are interested in data on an international scale, be sure to check out NationMaster, our sister site and the world’s largest central database for comparing countries.

What other uses can you find?

4 Comments | 1968, History, Libraries, On-line education, On-line learning, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Update your list of Utah mine disasters

August 7, 2007

When I put together the addendum list of disasters, to append to the Popular Science list of ten worst natural disasters in the last century in the U.S., I found it difficult to make a natural cutoff of mine disasters. From growing up in Utah I recalled the 1924 Castle Gate mine fire, which was covered fleetingly in Utah history texts, but became relevant during the 1963 potash mine incident. Local newspapers opened their archives, people who had roles in the incidents gave new interviews, and history came alive in the newspapers for a brief period.

A few years later, when I worked public policy for Utah politicians, in discussions of mine safety and the expansion of coal mining, I discovered that the history of Utah accidents had once again slipped from general public recall, and from the text books.

Once again, an accident of unbelievable proportions occurred in a massive coal mine in Utah, in an out-of-the-way place; a handful of people are trapped, and the nation hopes for their safety and prays for their rescue.

To its credit, the Salt Lake Tribune opened its archives again, and provides some historical context; somebody will need this list of Utah mine accidents in a few months, so I preserve it below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Disasters, History, Newspapers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Don’t trust what you read — on blogs, as well as in the news

August 6, 2007

The CEO of Fark suggests people turn off the newsfeeds for a while, and ignore the constant chatter of the internet.

Happy to be a Rock n’ Roller carries an excerpt of an interview with Drew Curtis:

Q: Which media patterns do you find most annoying, and which media patterns do you think are the most dangerous without being obviously so?

Equal time for nutjobs. It’s all funny when you talk about people not believing in moon landings, or who think an alien crash-landed in Texas in 1897, or who believe that there was once an ancient mediterranean civilization in Florida. It’s another thing entirely when people start to believe that denying the holocaust is a valid opinion.

Curtis wrote a book, It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News .  It should be required reading for students doing research on the internet, I suspect. 

(I wonder what the original venue of that interview is — anybody know?)

2 Comments | Bogus history, Newspapers, Technology, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hiroshima: August 6, 1945

August 6, 2007

Today, August 6, 2007, is the 62nd anniversary of the first use of atomic weapons in war, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. August 9 marks the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.

Please see my post of last year — the links all still work, and they provide significant resources for teachers and students to understand the events.

Performance of Texas students on questions about the end of the war in the Pacific, in the TAKS exit exams in 2007 showed minor improvements.

Other sources teachers may want to use:

7 Comments | 1941-1945, Atomic Bomb, Historic documents, History, History blogs, Nuclear weapons, Science, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Oliver W. Hill, history maker, 100

August 6, 2007

Oliver W. Hill in 1999, when he was 92; lawyer in Brown v. Board case

Literally while writing the previous post about the importance of recording history before the witnesses leave us, I heard on KERA-FM, NPR reporter Juan Williams’ intimate, detailed and stirring story about Oliver W. Hill, one of the lawyers who brought one of the five cases that resulted in the historic 1954 reversal of U.S. law, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (347 U.S. 483).

Oliver W. Hill died Sunday, in Richmond, Virginia. He was 100.

In 1940, Mr. Hill won his first civil rights case in Virginia, one that required equal pay for black and white teachers. Eight years later, he was the first black elected to the Richmond City Council since Reconstruction.

A lawsuit argued by Mr. Hill in 1951 on behalf of students protesting deplorable conditions at their high school for blacks in Farmville became one of five cases decided under Brown.

That case from Farmville offers students a more personal view of their own power in life. The case resulted from a student-led demonstration at Moton High School in Farmville. Moton was an all-black school, with facilities amazingly inferior to the new white high school in Farmville — no indoor plumbing, for example. While the Virginia NAACP failed at several similar cases earlier, and while the organization had a policy of taking no more school desegregation cases, the students’ earnestness and sincerity swayed Oliver Hill to try one more time:

On May 23, 1951, a NAACP lawyer filed suit in the federal district court in Richmond, VA, on behalf of 117 Moton High School, Prince Edward County, VA, students and their parents. The first plaintiff listed was Dorothy Davis, a 14-year old ninth grader; the case was titled Dorothy E. Davis, et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et. al. It asked that the state law requiring segregated schools in Virginia be struck down.

Davis was consolidated with four other cases, from the District of Columbia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Brown from Kansas; it was argued in 1953, but the Court deadlocked on a decision. When Chief Justice Arthur Vinson died and was replaced by the (hoped-to-be) conservative Chief Justice Earl Warren, Warren got the Court to re-hear the case. Because he thought it was such an important case in education, Warren worked to get a solid majority. The Court which was deadlocked late in 1953, in May 1954 issued the Brown decision unanimously, overturning the separate-but-equal rule from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (167 U.S. 537).

Brown was the big boulder whose rolling off the hill of segregation gave power to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That decision and the horrible murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 inspired civil rights worker Rosa Parks to take a stand, and take a seat for human rights on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December of 1955, which led to the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by the new preacher in town, a young man named Martin Luther King, Jr. When the Supreme Court again chose civil rights over segregation in the bus case, the wake of the great ship of history clearly showed a change in course.

Oliver Hill was there, one of the navigators of that ship of history.

1 Comment | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Fourteenth Amendment, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, U.S. Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

WSJ on oral histories: A hoax in the family line

August 6, 2007

Jay Gould told everybody he knew about his work recording the memories from the working people of Manhattan, real history. In 1942 he told The New Yorker of his work, and the phrase “oral history” leapt out of the story.

It was a great idea. But Gould made up everything about his work. At his death, friends discovered he left no oral histories behind.

It’s still a good idea, though, and it makes for good student project. Barry Weiss wrote a quick history of oral history for the Wall Street Journal last week. You can pull it off of JSTOR and use it as an introduction to the projects you assign to students.

You’ve never heard of him, but Robert Rush may be a modern-day Herodotus. Mr. Rush, who jokes that “he got his B.A. from the back of a Humvee,” is an oral historian with the U.S. Army. A retired command sergeant major who spent 30 years on active duty before getting his doctorate in history, Mr. Rush believes that recorded testimonies “can flesh out details that aren’t present in the paper histories.” In 2006, he was stationed in Iraq, where he spent seven months interviewing everyone from “engineers to bricklayers to military officers,” all with his handheld Olympus.

A century ago, historians might have laughed at Mr. Rush’s desire to spend time talking to construction workers. Today, the populist impulse is everywhere in the study of history.

Veteran interviews need to be done quickly for any veterans left from World War I, and for the few remaining veterans from World War II and Korea. There is a crying need for interviews of the women who performed the “Rosie the Riveter” work building airplanes, tanks, bombs, and other manufactured items, especially interviews of those women who worked in heavy industries and then went home to raise families when the men returned from foreign fronts. Rush got the soldiers while they were in Iraq — many of them are home now, and provide a source of oral history.

Veterans of Gulf War I, and Vietnam, have stories that need to be told and recorded. There is much to be done.

These stories would be perfect for podcasts, by the way.

Today, digital technology has allowed for every fisherman and every member of Parliament to immortalize their stories. With folks from all walks of life now making autobiographical podcasts, historians in the future will be presented with the issue of how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Storycorps, an ambitious national oral- history project whose results can occasionally be heard on NPR, does some of this sorting, providing a more structured opportunity for such recordings than YouTube. In soundbooths across the country, Americans can come in and record their stories for 40 minutes, which then get archived in the Library of Congress. David Isay, the founder of Storycorps, describes the act of listening to the voice as “an adrenaline shot to the heart.” The physical experience of hearing another’s words can bring an understanding that reading those words on a page simply cannot.

If you go to the Library of Congress Web site you can listen to Lloyd Brown, the last U.S. Navy veteran of World War I, who died earlier this year. On the 71-minute recording, which he made at age 103, Mr. Brown offers a confession for posterity. “I lied about my age; I told them I was 18,” he recalls in a Southern drawl. At 16, he couldn’t wait two years to join the Navy. “It was a matter of patriotism.” So says the voice from history.

Weiss’s story, in the on-line version, briefly linked to this blog last week, bringing in at least two readers. Alas for the blog, but good for readers, the links at the bottom of the page change. Follow what’s there, see what you find.

2 Comments | Capturing history, Historic documents, History, History audio sources, Korea, Vietnam, World War I, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dodd, 1, O’Reilly, 0

August 6, 2007

Bloggernista linked to a video where Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., pins Bill O’Reilly for his scurrilous attacks on bloggers.  O’Reilly fans shouldn’t watch.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Dissent, Ethics, Politics, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cool tool: Tag clouds of presidents’ thoughts

August 5, 2007

Only Crook pointed this out in a comment — and it’s neat enough to raise to a headline:

 . . . have you seen the U.S. Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/ I happened upon a speech by Millard Fillmore, so naturally I thought of this blog. I can’t link you directly to the speech I looked at, which was his 1850 State of the Union Address, (you have to use the slider to get there) but these were the most common words in that speech according to the tag cloud:

appropriations california constitution negotiation pacific ports revenue territory treasury treaty war

Go try it out.   It’s a very interesting tool for the visual portrayal of information — visual portrayals that I don’t know how to copy for display here.

For example, notice the arrival of the word “California” in presidential speeches, circa 1848.  Note how the word grows over the next few years, but then disappears just prior to the Civil War — what might that suggest to students about events in California, compared to events in the rest of the U.S.?  Or, track the word “Constitution” from the earliest speeches/writings listed to the latest.  Or track the use of the word “Iraq” in President Bush’s speeches, between 2000 and 2007.

The tool is ahead of its time, a fun device now.  The key question is, how should we be using such information?

Chirag Mehta created the program. Browsing his site will give teachers good ideas about what can be done by a decent programmer.  Does any school have a programmer to make such things for the classroom?  And we’re supposed to be using technology?  (Mehta’s stuff may be as good as it looks — see this article about the tag cloud device, in the Wall Street Journal, no less.)

1 Comment | Historic documents, History, On-line education, On-line learning, Politics, Presentations, Student projects, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Shortest term on the Supreme Court, and an unexpected controversy

August 5, 2007

Real history has enough mystery and controversy in it that one need not make up fictions.

I posed a question about who served the shortest term on the Supreme Court.

I had stumbled across the fact, and found it interesting: Edwin McMasters Stanton was a Supreme Court Associate Justice for one day in 1869.

Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's Sec. of War, Or was he? In the comments to my previous post, Ray from Anything Goes Discussions Edutechation (or Education Technology, more formally) pointed out that the official list of members from the Supreme Court Historical Association denies that Stanton took the oath of office, and so does not list him as a Member of the Court. What are the facts?

One source I have said Stanton took the oath of office on his deathbed, and died within hours. (Wikipedia agrees, but on such an issue, without reference, one should not trust it unconditionally.) The list from the Supreme Court specifically mentions the need to take the oath of office to be a Member, and leaves Stanton off the list, suggesting that he did not take the oath. What’s the truth in this matter? I do not know.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | 1861-1865, Abraham Lincoln, Cartoons, Civil War, History, Politics, Reconstruction, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Brainwashing for politics and profit: Global warming denial

August 5, 2007

Newsweek cover, August 13, 2007

We are plagued by industries set up to deny reality. It’s impossible to discuss public policy without smashing into organizations set up specifically to question history and hard science, and plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the public about the way things really are. When my job was to fight them, with essentially no budget, as late as 1985 there was a well-funded lobby in Washington that cranked out weekly “news” and opinion columns for smaller and less discriminating news outlets like weekly papers and local television stations, extolling the virtues of tobacco and claiming that no scientist had any real evidence that smoking is unhealthy.

A lot of those disinformation artists have moved on — not to the Soviet Union, since it collapsed and took most its propaganda machine with it — to denial of reality on global warming, evolutionary biology, pesticides and chemicals, and a host of other issues.

Sharon Begley’s story in the August 13, 2007, Newsweek pulls back the veil on the well-funded industry that tries to plant doubt about the reality of global warming: “The Truth about Denial.” If this is news to you, that people get paid well to hoax the public, you really need to read the story:

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the “Live Earth” concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, “green” magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore’s best-selling book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. “They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”

Do these deniers affect public policy? Gullibles, political opponents, handmaidens of error, and even well-meaning suckers fall for spin on science, over and over again: On global warming (see this one, too), on DDT and malaria, teaching science in public schools, alternative medicine and preventive vaccines, and other issues including (who could make this up?) riding a bicycle.

No, I don’t have a solution.

6 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, DDT, Hoaxes, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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