Nature and science produce some of the most beatiful stuff, especially in high-speed phtotography, or photo-micrographs, or shots from scanners of various kinds including especially Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM).
I spent three years locked in a lab looking at photographs of Nuclepore filters that had captured dust, pollen, and air pollution in the desert southwest. Magnified about 50,000 times, fly ash from coal-fired power plants become brilliant balls of glassy light; pollen from god-knows-what become intricate, Alhambra-worthy patterned stones, and dust becomes jagged expressionistic sculptures of someone greatly disturbed (but still artistically gifted).
Now we know that proteins fold up in specific ways. Micrographic photos show wiggles of ribbon to you and me.
It’s inspiration to May K.
You and I see tangled ribbons:
To May K the human protein 2-nd PDZ Domain of Mint1 becomes . . .
Thomas Nast helped bring down the crooks at Tammany Hall with cartoons. Boss Tweed, the chief antagonist of Nast, crook and leader of the Tammany Gang, understood that Nast’s drawings could do him in better than just hard hitting reporting — the pictures were clear to people who couldn’t read.
But a cartoon has to get to an audience to have an effect.
Here’s a cartoon below, a comment on the security wall being built in Israel, that got very little circulation in the west at Christmas time. Can you imagine the impact had this drawing run in newspapers in Europe, the U.S., and Canada?
It’s a mashup of a famous oil painting* related to the Christian Nativity, from a London-based artist who goes by the name Banksy. (Warning: Banksy pulls no punches; views shown are quite strong, often very funny, always provocative, generally safe for work unless you work for an authoritarian like Dick Cheney who wants no counter opinions.)
Banksy's modern nativity -- does he ever bother to copyright his stuff, or would he rather you broadcast it?
* At least I thought so in 2008. I can’t find the painting now. Anybody recognize a work underneath Banksy’s re-imagining? Let us know in comments, eh?
The War Against Bugs, by Print Magazine — a Neocide ad from European media.
With all due respect to entomologists, there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about bugs (insects by any other name). These little monsters certainly have ecological significance, but don’t tell me they are fun to have crawling around. Hence, chemical manufacturers have made it their business to find he most efficient means of ridding the pests while retaining the fine upstanding species. Too bad that anything designed to kill will doubtless have ill effects on he eco-system. In he 50s DDT was the magic bullet against such varieties as various potato beetles, coddling moth, corn earworm, cotton bollworm and tobacco budworms (eeeecccchhhh!). Then in 1972, the US Environmental Protection Agency curtailed all use of DDT on crops. The ban did not take hold in other countries until much later, and DDT was vociferously promoted through eerie calls to arms like this poster by Savignac.
Earlier I questioned whether Einstein actually said that. I don’t think he did — but I love the poster and the sentiment, all the same. I haven’t been able to verify the quote in Alice Calaprice’s The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, for example.
In my classroom the air conditioning often did not work last spring, at testing time. When we’d open the windows, we’d get visitors — usually bees, but birds on at least two occasions. The student in the picture has her priorities right.
The poster is just $10.95. Teachers, if a dozen of these appeared in your school, it might make a difference.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Aurel Bacs, International Head of the Watch Department, shares his passion and knowledge of the only known matching pair of gold and enamel singing bird pistols, to be offered at Christie’s Hong Kong Important Watches sale on 30 May 2011.
This is the only known pair of matching singing bird pistols, thought to have been created by Frères Rochat, a Swiss watch, toy and machine maker. Several people have sent me links and alerts to this video over the past several weeks — it’s worth seeing, just to admire the craftsmanship, and inventiveness required to make these things.
No matter how much the Texas State Board of Education wishes to run away from America’s heritage, we can’t.
Nor should we want to.
Propaganda is not a bad word. There is bad propaganda, stuff that doesn’t work. There is propaganda for bad purposes, stuff that promotes bad policies, or evil. But good propaganda is stronger, long-lasting, often full of great artistic merit, and instructive.
Images of Uncle Sam provide clear pictures of what Americans were thinking, from the oldest versions to today.
This poster above is a World War I poster designed to convince Americans to get involved in the war effort. J. C. Leyendecker, a noted illustrator, casts Uncle Sam as a baseball player up to bat. The poster says simply, “Get in the game with Uncle Sam.” Perhaps uniquely, this poster showed Sam in yellow-striped pants, instead of the more traditional red-striped. Could an artist take such liberty today?
Meanwhile, then-president Woodrow Wilson, who had won reelection in 1916 on an anti-war platform, faced the need for American participation in the terrible “Great War” raging in Europe. He and his cabinet knew that American involvement loomed. But how could the government convince the American public that this was necessary? One idea was to create a poster that urged Americans to metaphorically “Get in the Game,” along with their patriotic national symbol, Uncle Sam.
Artist J. C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) designed the poster, commissioned by the Publicity Committee of the Citizens Preparedness Association, a pro-war organization with federal support which also sponsored “preparedness parades” and other nationalistic activities. Leyendecker himself emigrated from Germany at age eight and was approaching the pinnacle of his career in 1917 when he created this work.
The poster just preceded James Montgomery Flagg’s famous “I Want You” image of Uncle Sam, which later became the best-known likeness of the country’s unofficial symbol. Leyendecker’s version, in spite of his baseball bat, is possibly less affable to contemporary eyes than Flagg’s friendlier Sam. But the bat he holds connected him to many Americans, who perhaps then decided that America should “get in the game.”
Some of this older propaganda had a humorous twist I think is too often missing from modern posters. It was more effective for that, I think.
The image of Sam at bat shows up in many places in the internet world, but most often stripped of its identifying links to Leyendecker. That does disservice to the art, to history, and to Leyendecker, who was one of our nation’s better illustrators for a very long time.
Dick Feynman taught in Rio de Janeiro for a while. He was frustrated at the way Brazilian students of that day learned physics by rote, instead of in labs. In a lecture he looked out from the classroom to the sun dancing on the waves of the Atlantic, and he realized it was a beautiful, brilliant demonstration of light refraction, the topic of the day. Sadly, the students didn’t understand that the beauty before them was a physics problem. (Was that story in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, or What Do You Care What Others Think?)
Here, a marriage of physics, moonlight, spring runoff over a cliff, and modern photography, in Yosemite. If you don’t gasp, call your physician and find a new sensei:
(Programs and maintenance of this park are threatened by Republican budget writers, BTW.)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
The fictional but very popular memes that environmentalists hate humans, humanity and capitalism wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t blind their believers to larger truths and sensible policies on environmental protection.
One may argue the history of the environmental movement, how most of the originators were great capitalists and humanitarians — think Carnegie, Laurance Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and all the early medical doctors who warned of the dangers of pollution-caused diseases — but it falls on deaf ears on the other sides.
BusinessWeek cover, April 18-24, 2011 - Don't play chicken with debt ceiling; chicken image by Jan Hamus/Alamy
Not every one of the Bloomberg Businessweek covers has been a hit, but a lot of them are — vastly more entertaining since Bloomberg took over the old workhorse magazine.
This one packs a political punch along with visual excitement.
And it’s right. Do any Republicans pay attention to the finance and business worlds anymore?
You did remember, right? I got another reminder in e-mail:
National Poetry Month continues, and so does your support! We’re getting closer to our goal of $30,000 in 30 days, and we thank you for your donation. If you haven’t donated yet, please do. You’ll be helping us share your love of poetry with children and adults all across America.
Here’s another way to support National Poetry Month: celebrate Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 14. It’s simple: tuck a poem you love in your pocket and share it with co-workers, family, and friends. Or go a step further and create your own Poem In Your Pocket Day event using the ideas at www.poets.org/pockets.
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Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
One of what should be an occasional series of posts on American iconic places, natural features, sights to see, etc. For studies of U.S. history and U.S. geography, each of these posts covers subjects an educated American should know. What is the value of these icons? Individually and collectively, our preservation of them may do nothing at all for the defense of our nation. But individually and collectively, they help make our nation worth defending.
This is a less-than-10-minute video you can insert into class as a bell ringer, or at the end of a class, or as part of a study of geologic formations, or in any of a number of other ways. Yosemite Nature Notes provides glorious pictures and good information about Yosemite National Park — this video explains the modern incarnation of Half Dome, an enormous chunk of granite that captures the imagination of every living, breathing soul who ever sees it.
Potential questions for class discussion:
Have you put climbing Half Dome on your bucket list yet? Why not?
Is it really wilderness when so many people go there?
How should the National Park Service, and the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, manage these spectacular, completely unique features, both to preserve their wild nature, and allow people to visit them?
What are the federalism issues involved in protecting Half Dome, or any grand feature, like the Great Smokey Mountains, Great Dismal Swamp, Big Bend, Yellowstone Falls, or Lincoln Memorial?
Nearly six million people have watched this — surely you’re among them:
Up and Over It! Odd name for a dance company (would it be suitable for a synth pop band?). Suzanne Cleary and Peter Harding, veterans of Irish step-dancing megaproductions.
But, did you click over to see their Facebook site, or their regular website? This dance team takes dance in Ireland well beyond the range of “Riverdance,” and makes it really entertaining.
Acclaimed Irish Dancers Suzanne Cleary & Peter Harding blow the brains out of the Irish Dance show genre in a multi-media extravaganza. This brand new show liberates Irish Dance from its velvet-clad, tin-whistle-blowing, diddly-idleness and drags it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Inspired by hip-hop theatre, contemporary dance and electro-pop, Cleary and Harding present their alternative take on the Irish dance show format, asking what’s next for the 90s phenomenon we all loved or loathed?
Have you looked? A sampler of their work:
Story telling by artists, but in media underused and underappreciated, probably because of the difficulties to work in them:
Most of the time, it’s just good fun to watch. Isn’t that meaning enough these days?
(Sheesh! Riverdance was ’90s? High school kids today won’t remember it.)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Hubert von Herkomer's 1903 portrait of the founder of Scouting, Sir Robert Baden-Powell - California State University's World Images Kiosk
Before Boy Scouting, Sir Robert Baden-Powell was the hero of the Siege of Mafeking, during the Boer War. This image of the founder of Scouting does not appear often, but deserves some audience, here in the Centennial of Scouting in the U.S.
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 
Here’s another way to support National Poetry Month: celebrate Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 14. It’s simple: tuck a poem you love in your pocket and share it with co-workers, family, and friends. Or go a step further and create your own Poem In Your Pocket Day event using the ideas at 
Thanks for being a part of the 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 