Bathtub reading on a warm June Sunday

June 7, 2009

I thought everybody does serious reading in the bathtub, no?

The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona; the Pima Air & Space Museum now offers bus tours of the 309th Maintenance and Regeneration Groups collection of scrapped and very historic airplanes

The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona; the Pima Air & Space Museum now offers bus tours of the 309th Maintenance and Regeneration Group's collection of scrapped and very historic airplanes

Can’t soak all day.

6 Comments | Airplanes, Archaeology, Fossils, Geography - Physical, geology, History, History museums, Hoaxes, Journalism, Museums, Politics, Religion, Religious Freedom, Research, Science, Social Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

I get e-mail: Ads for Quality Bathtubs

June 6, 2009

Gotta love it.  Did this person bother to click on the blog to see what goes on here?

Hello,

I represent a company called _________________, a company that does what’s known as advanced search engine placement. We reach a Network of over 35 million people who are predominantly US based. Our Network is entirely opt-in, and the users on our Network allow us to present them with a preferred choice whenever they are looking for anything on the top sixteen search engines. (GOOGLE, YAHOO, MSN and thirteen others.)

I seek one source to send the users on our Network, from the major search engines, for different types of quality bath tubs.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I am in the office daily from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific time.

Best regards,

___ _________
Business Segment Analyst, ____ ___________
Phone: 800.XXX.XXXX, ext XXXX

Do they know something about Millard Fillmore that I don’t?

1 Comment | Humor, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Detour – slow blogging next few days

March 12, 2009

It may be difficult to get less active than I already am.

For the next four days

I’m out of town, seminaring on Washington and the Constitution.  (George Washington, no D.C.)

One rule of the seminar is no computers, so no live blogging.

FYI.

2 Comments | Administrivia, Personal | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Should teachers blog?

January 21, 2009

Teachers are public employees (most of us).  Should we blog about education and teaching?

Interestingly, there is a good case to be made that public employees have more First Amendment protection than private employees (should teachers in KIPP, charter and parochial schools blog?).

Larry Solum at Legal Theory highlights Paul Secunda’s article:

Paul M. Secunda (Marquette University – Law School) has posted Blogging While (Publicly) Employed: Some First Amendment Implications (University of Louisville Law Review, Vol. 47, No. 4, 2009) on SSRN.

I’ll wager most teachers are not common users of SSRN, so let’s steal Solum’s posting of the abstract of the article, too:

While private-sector employees do not have First Amendment free speech protection for their blogging activities relating to the workplace, public employees may enjoy some measure of protection depending on the nature of their blogging activity. The essential difference between these types of employment stems from the presence of state action in the public employment context. Although a government employee does not have the same protection from governmental speech infringement as citizens do under the First Amendment, a long line of cases under Pickering v. Bd. of Education have established a modicum of protection, especially when the public employee blogging is off-duty and the blog post does not concern work-related matters.

Describing the legal protection for such public employee bloggers is an important project as many employers recently have ratcheted up their efforts to limit or ban employee blogging activities while blogging by employees simultaneously continues to expand. It should therefore not be surprising that the act of being fired for blogging about one’s employer has even led to a term being coined: “dooced.” So the specific question that this essay addresses is: do dooced employees have any First Amendment protection in the workplace? But the larger issue examined by implication, and the one addressed by this Symposium, is the continuing impact of technology on First Amendment free speech rights at the beginning of the 21st Century.

This contribution to the Symposium proceeds in three parts. It first examines the predicament of private-sector employees who choose to blog about their workplaces. The second section then lays out the potential First Amendment free speech implications for public employees who engage in the same types of activities. Finally, the third section briefly considers a potential future trend in this context from Kentucky involving government employers banning employee access to all blogs while at work.

I’ve been wondering where are the cases of student blogs dealing with serious First Amendment issues.  I think we’re overdue for more litigation in that area.

4 Comments | First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, U.S. Constitution, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hope for the future: Great student blogs

November 10, 2008

P. Z. Myers asks that we go vote for Brian Switek, a student at Rutgers who blogs at Laelaps.  The winner of this vote gets $10,000 in scholarship money.  I’m sure all of these students deserve it.

And so, I’ll encourage you to take a look at Brian’s generally outstanding and always interesting blog, and then go look at the other candidates, and vote.

Best thing:  You can look at all the other blogs.  Some of them are very, very good, and they cover a wide range of issues.  Economics.  Vole research (the pictures of the shrews and moles are darling, really).  Politics.  Islamic politics.  More stuff.

These are the youngsters, the up and comers.

Wow.

1 Comment | Education, Politics, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Thanks a million

September 29, 2008

Sometime Monday afternoon or evening at approximately 4:40 p.m. Central Daylight Time, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub will pass passed the million total views milestone.

It’s nowhere near the readership of Pharyngula, Eduwonks, Daily Kos or others.   For some reason, many readers feel no need to scrawl on the bathroom wall here (comments are always welcomed, edited only for profanity), so the comments don’t reflect total readership, I think.

Thank you to each and every reader, and especially to the faithful readers who keep coming back day after day.  Thank you to the large handful who send story ideas.

In periods like the current one, when there is so little time to post on key issues, it’s especially gratifying that readership continues to rise.

Thank you, Dear Readers.

9 Comments | Administrivia, Personal, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Road trip!

September 19, 2008

A bit unexpectedly, I’m in the wilds of Wisconsin at the moment and on the road the next couple of days.  Posting is likely to be sparse.

But the American open road is, as always, very interesting.

For example, according to the billboards, somewhere in Wisconsin there is a restaurant named Brisco’s (after Brisco County, Texas?), which claims to feature cuisine (a French word) of a “southwestern” flavor.  What does that mean?

Their billboard features a Wyoming-style cowboy, a saguaro cactus (from 800 miles south of Wyoming) in front of Delicate Arch, the signature arch of Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah, (well out of cattle company and still at least 400 miles from saguaro country).  Only on a billboard in Wisconsin . . .

3 Comments | Administrivia, Botany, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Natural history, Travel, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

900,000

August 14, 2008

Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub passed the 900,000 clicks mark about 8 a.m. Central Time.

Thanks to readers.

Dear Readers, leave more comments! Anonymous visitors, you know who you are.  Exercise your right to free speech, here, at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

As people like Emma Goldman were prevented from speaking, societies formed to protect the right to free speech. A pamphlet created by Alden Freeman alerted people to the fight for free speech. It contains a tongue-in-cheek New York Times account of his attempt to hold a meeting where Emma Goldman could speak freely and without police restriction.

"As people like Emma Goldman were prevented from speaking, societies formed to protect the right to free speech. A pamphlet created by Alden Freeman alerted people to the fight for free speech. It contains a tongue-in-cheek New York Times account of his attempt to hold a meeting where Emma Goldman could speak freely and without police restriction."

From UC Berkeley’s Digital Library, The Emma Goldman Papers, “The Fight for Free Speech.”  Curriculum and lesson plans for high school and middle school classes.

Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Free press, Free speech, Freedom - Political, History, Personal, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Really useful economics blogs

July 25, 2008

Still working on a simple list of economics blogs for the blogroll.

Of course, you’re probably aware of the trying-to-be-comprehensive listings of blogs at Acadamicblogs.org. Here’s the list of economics blogs. Tell us, Dear Reader, which of these blogs do you regularly read, which do you recommend, and which are missing from the list?

(I’ve already noticed that the high-faluting Becker-Posner Blog, and the always-interesting Michael Perelman’s Unsettling Economics are not on the list. The list strives to be comprehensive. There is a whole lotta blogs out there.)

Economic blogs, from AcademicBlogs.com; I have edited the list to include just the name of the blog with a link:

0-9

A-D

E-H

I-L

M-P

Q-T

U-Z

1 Comment | Economics, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bloggers’ rights: A quandary

July 25, 2008

Freedom of expression is the key to all other rights in our American system of government, I am convinced. Defending the First Amendment becomes the way to defend all other rights. Telling the King he has no clothes, without fear of retribution, makes it possible to keep the King clothed.

I support most groups and efforts to defend and protect the First Amendment. I’ve been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists for most years since 1974, I’ve been a member of the National Freedom of Information coordinating committee, and I’ve worked in three states and the federal legislature to expand freedom of information, reporters’ access to information, and especially the people’s right to know.

In the press, there are few hard-core idiots. A few exist, but they are outweighed by the many who make sincere efforts to get the story right. That’s a long way of saying, it’s easy to support rights of people who aren’t always yapping at you.  Their existence puts me in a little quandary, and I need to resolve it.

Last night I found one more deluded, on-line writer working against the First Amendment and, IMHO, hammering away at the foundations of the Constitution in other ways. (Incredibly, this guy asked Jonathan Rowe to abandon commenting at his blog, suggesting Rowe’s carefully crafted, court-tested, generally take-’em-to-the-bank correct ideas about history are “lies.” Yeah, he has a right to hold foolish opinions.)

Does he have a right to do that, on-line?

Yes he does have that right. As I’ve often said before, I put a lot of stock into the old Ben Franklin maxim that truth wins in a fair fight. So we need to keep the fight fair.

We also need to defend the rights of bloggers whose work helps expose the truth, even at the expense of defending the deluded writers who get it wrong.

What are blogger’s rights and protections? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) put together a concise and nearly complete legal guide for bloggers — you can find it here.

EFF campaigns to protect and defend bloggers’ rights. Bloggers, and other supporters of freedom, should join that campaign. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub will display a badge of the campaign to encourage others to join it.

Bloggers' Rights at EFF

Do you like freedom? Do you read a lot? Do you read on-line? Do you express your opinions? Then you have a vested interest in supporting these groups. Since you’re reading this on-line, you have a vested interest in supporting the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s work to defend bloggers’ rights. Click over to EFF, get informed, lend some support, and get involved.

This blog is banned in Turkey, prohibited from viewing in China, non-grata in much of Singapore and Iran, and blocked from the Duncanville, Texas, Independent School District.  I appreciate the freedom to blog, and I hope we can keep blogging free everywhere else, and make blogging free in those areas darkened by bans on expression.

(Okay, I like the cat in the one badge from the EFF — would it kill them to put a dog in one?)

13 Comments | Accuracy, Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, Politics, U.S. Constitution, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Adam Smith Lives!” is dead

July 21, 2008

No updates in several months — the only thing I can conclude is that the blog, Adam Smith Lives!, is dead.

Gone from the blogroll.

I’m interested in finding good blogs on economics, world history, and government — Dear Reader, which ones have I overlooked?

7 Comments | Administrivia, Economics, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Golden Primate award

July 20, 2008

Kate at the Radula gifted Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub with a Golden Primate Award. It’s a blog award for blogs that “appeal to the rationalists among us, and those of us who aren’t ashamed to be related to monkeys.”

Who was it said “the more I know of men, the more I love my dog?” (Some sources say Pascal; I doubt that attribution.)

Substitute “monkey” for dog — who wouldn’t be proud to be related to such noble creatures?

The symbol for the award will be displayed on the blog’s front page.

Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Point of personal privilege, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

850,000

July 15, 2008

The milestone of 850,000 clicks sneaked by last week.  Thanks to you, Dear Reader.

1 Comment | Administrivia, Personal, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

800,000

June 1, 2008

It’s been a slow month.  Sometime Tuesday or early Wednesday the Bathtub gets its 800,000th view.  Won’t make a million by the 2nd anniversary at that rate, but considering how few posts I’ve made lately, on bland topics, it’s not bad.

As always, thanks to all visitors, and double thanks to anyone who comments.

Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Point of personal privilege, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Live blogging conferences: Physics!

May 23, 2008

Our Italian friend at A Quantum Diaries Survivor is in Albuquerque for PPC08 — don’t ask me what that stands for, but it’s a physics conference.  More, he found another physicist blogging away:  World o Science.

If you’re interested in science research, check it out.  Some of the posts are terribly technical — I don’t understand them, so I’ll have to get one of our sons to explain it to me — but you can catch the drift of what’s going on.  Tommaso also offers a few photos of the Albuquerque area and Sandia Peak, worth the click alone.

It’s a good model of what some of us should do more of (yeah, this is self-flagellation).

Some samples:

1 Comment | Astronomy, Journalism, Physics, Research, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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