RMS Titanic sailing from Southampton, England, April 10, 1912 - Wikipedia/public domain
On April 10, 1912, RMS Titanic sailed from England, heading to New York on her maiden voyage.
More:
Leave a Comment » | 
Disasters, History, History museums | Tagged: Disasters, History, Icebergs, Museums, RMS Titanic | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Every year at this time . . .
In a discussion of the Cold War, the Space Race, and the Race to the Moon, we get to a photo about Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon.
Like clockwork, a hand goes up: “Mr. Darrell, wasn’t that landing a hoax? They didn’t really go to the Moon then, did they?”
There are a lot of ways to know that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Among other things, students could talk to people alive at the time who have the slightest bit of technological savvy: With lots of other people, I tracked part of the trip with my 6-inch reflecting telescope. Ham radio operators listened in on the radio broadcasts. And so on.
But I really like this chunk of evidence: How about a photograph of the landing site?
Holy cow! You can see the tracksof Neil Armstrong’s footprints to the lip of Little West crater (see arrow below).
Tranquility Base, shot from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), showing the traces left by Apollo 11's landing on the Moon. It really happened. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
According to the LROC website:
The astronaut path to the TV camera is visible, and you may even be able to see the camera stand (arrow). You can identify two parts of the Early Apollo Science Experiments Package (EASEP) – the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflector (LRRR) and the Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE). Neil Armstrong’s tracks to Little West crater (33 m diameter) are also discernable (unlabeled arrow). His quick jaunt provided scientists with their first view into a lunar crater.
Check out this video made from the photos, “High Noon at Tranquility Base”:
Fox News? What’s your story now?
More:
Tip of the old scrub brush to Collect Space forum, and the Carnival of Space #147 at Weird Sciences. Thanks to ScienceBlips for telling us about Carnival of Space.
10 Comments | Accuracy, History, Hoaxes, How do we know what we know, Moon, NASA, Space exploration, Space Race | Tagged: Accuracy, Apollo 11, History, Hoaxes, Moon, Moon Landing, Moon Landing Hoax, NASA, Space Race | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle on Texas SBOE social studies standards, in 2009
2 Comments | Accuracy, Cartoons, Economics, Education, Education quality, History, Political cartoons, Politics, Separation of church and state, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Cartoons, Education, education standards, History, Houston Chronicle, Nick Anderson, Political cartoons, Politics, Social Studies, state board of education, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages on April 11, 2006 — almost exactly four years ago.
Sound like recent events?
GOOD GOVERNMENT
Health Care for Everyone?
We’ve found a way.by MITT ROMNEY
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:01 A.M. EDTBOSTON–Only weeks after I was elected governor, Tom Stemberg, the founder and former CEO of Staples, stopped by my office. He told me, “If you really want to help people, find a way to get everyone health insurance.” I replied that would mean raising taxes and a Clinton-style government takeover of health care. He insisted: “You can find a way.”
I believe that we have. Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen.
When I took up Tom’s challenge, I assembled a team from business, academia and government and asked them first to find out who was uninsured, and why. What they found was surprising. Some 20% of the state’s uninsured population qualified for Medicaid but had never signed up. So we built and installed an Internet portal for our hospitals and clinics: When uninsured individuals show up for treatment, we enter their data online. If they qualify for Medicaid, they’re enrolled.
Another 40% of the uninsured were earning enough to buy insurance but had chosen not to do so. Why? Because it is expensive, and because they know that if they become seriously ill, they will get free or subsidized treatment at the hospital. By law, emergency care cannot be withheld. Why pay for something you can get free?
Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes. The solution we came up with was to make private health insurance much more affordable. Insurance reforms now permit policies with higher deductibles, higher copayments, coinsurance, provider networks and fewer mandated benefits like in vitro fertilization–and our insurers have committed to offer products nearly 50% less expensive. With private insurance finally affordable, I proposed that everyone must either purchase a product of their choice or demonstrate that they can pay for their own health care. It’s a personal responsibility principle.
Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.
Another group of uninsured citizens in Massachusetts consisted of working people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford health-care insurance. Here the answer is to provide a subsidy so they can purchase a private policy. The premium is based on ability to pay: One pays a higher amount, along a sliding scale, as one’s income is higher. The big question we faced, however, was where the money for the subsidy would come from. We didn’t want higher taxes; but we did have about $1 billion already in the system through a long-established uninsured-care fund that partially reimburses hospitals for free care. The fund is raised through an annual assessment on insurance providers and hospitals, plus contributions from the state and federal governments.
To determine if the $1 billion would be enough, Jonathan Gruber of MIT built an econometric model of the population, and with input from insurers, my in-house team crunched the numbers. Again, the result surprised us: We needed far less than the $1 billion for the subsidies. One reason is that this population is healthier than we had imagined. Instead of single parents, most were young single males, educated and in good health. And again, because health insurance will now be affordable and subsidized, we insist that everyone purchase health insurance from one of our private insurance companies.
And so, all Massachusetts citizens will have health insurance. It’s a goal Democrats and Republicans share, and it has been achieved by a bipartisan effort, through market reforms.
We have received some helpful enhancements. The Heritage Foundation helped craft a mechanism, a “connector,” allowing citizens to purchase health insurance with pretax dollars, even if their employer makes no contribution. The connector enables pretax payments, simplifies payroll deduction, permits prorated employer contributions for part-time employees, reduces insurer marketing costs, and makes it efficient for policies to be entirely portable. Because small businesses may use the connector, it gives them even greater bargaining power than large companies. Finally, health insurance is on a level playing field.
Two other features of the plan reduce the rate of health-care inflation. Medical transparency provisions will allow consumers to compare the quality, track record and cost of hospitals and providers; given deductibles and coinsurance, these consumers will have the incentive and the information for market forces to influence behavior. Also, electronic health records are in the works, which will reduce medical errors and lower costs.
My Democratic counterparts have added an annual $295 per-person fee charged to employers that do not contribute toward insurance premiums for any of their employees. The fee is unnecessary and probably counterproductive, and so I will take corrective action.
How much of our health-care plan applies to other states? A lot. Instead of thinking that the best way to cover the uninsured is by expanding Medicaid, they can instead reform insurance.
Will it work? I’m optimistic, but time will tell. A great deal will depend on the people who implement the program. Legislative adjustments will surely be needed along the way. One great thing about federalism is that states can innovate, demonstrate and incorporate ideas from one another. Other states will learn from our experience and improve on what we’ve done. That’s the way we’ll make health care work for everyone.
Mr. Romney is governor of Massachusetts.
What changed in the last four years? It wasn’t the need for health care reform.
Four years ago Republicans thought it was a great idea. It was a great way to stimulate business and solve a nagging problem facing all Americans.
At Waterloo, what do you think happened to soldiers from Britain and Prussia who defected to Napoleon’s cause? Did they regret their decision?
1 Comment | Health care, History, History Revisionism, Politics | Tagged: Elections, Health care, History, History Revisionism, Mitt Romney, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You’ve read the health care reform bill, and you didn’t find any creeping socialism in it, nor did you find any little Joe Stalins hiding in Section 34, nor anywhere else.
How could people make such bizarre, outlandish claims?
It’s historic, really.
Keep America Committee flyer, 1955 - courtesy of Alex Massie
That’s right! Good mental health is anathema to conservative Republicans!
5 Comments | Health care, Historic documents, History images, McCarthyism, Political Smear, Politics, Red Scare, Socialism | Tagged: Health Care Reform, History, Keep America Committee, McCarthyism, Mental Health Care, Polio Vaccine, Political Smear, Red Scare, Water Fluoridation | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s astounding in its error.
Cynthia Dunbar told Chris Matthews today that Thomas Aquinas played a more important role in the American Revolution than Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson, Texas students learn in other places, wrote the great body of the Declaration of Independence, and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which is the direct forebear of religious freedom in U.S. Constitutional law.
If you hurry, you can see it tonight (at 6:00 p.m and 11:00 p.m Central, I’m told) on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball.”
Isn’t it astounding people who claim to be Christian will tell such bold lies to children? It’s as if they think Jesus said “make the children suffer” instead of what Jesus did say. Voodoo history at its most voodoo; history revisionism of the rankest sort. Where’s Mermelstein?
You can see it online here, at Hardball’s website.
Dunbar and her fellow travellers are effing idiots. Strong post to follow.
______________
SSOE? State Soviet of Education. Why do you ask?
2 Comments | Economics, History, Rampant stupidity, Social Studies, State school boards, Texas, Textbook Selection | Tagged: Declaration of Independence, Economics, History, Rampant stupidity, Religious Freedom, Social Studies, Thomas Jefferson, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Tuesday, March 16 was the 259th anniversary of the birth of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, the sponsor of the Bill of Rights, the life-long campaigner for good government based on knowledge of the errors of history, especially in the area of religious freedom.
Under social studies standards proposed by the Texas State Board of Education, Texas students will never study Madison’s views, or Madison’s Constitution, without intervention by their parents or good teachers who run some risk to teach the glories of American history to students.
Newspaper stories across the nation concentrated on Madison’s birthday expressed revulsion and rejection of the crabbed and cramped views of the Texas SBOE, and the cup of revulsion runneth over.
For example, the attempted evisceration and hobbling of science standards occurred last year, but the editorial cartoon in USA Today reached back to remind us just what is going on in Austin.
By Scott Stantis, Chicago Tribune, for USA TODAY, March 16, 2010
More comment to come.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Christina Castillo Comer.
2 Comments | Accuracy, America's founding, American Revolution, Economics, Education, Education quality, Evolution, History, Science, Social Studies, State school boards, Texas | Tagged: Economics, Education, education standards, Evolution, History, Science, Social Studies, Texas State Board of Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
This is a story of two cities located within 100 miles of each other in Colorado, in that paradise created by close mountain recreation, clean and clear western vistas, and local, great universities. The question is, does this story tell a tale of urban growth that mistakenly shows up as global warming, or is it a story of wise planning that avoids the harms of global warming — or something else in between, or completely different?
Boulder, Colorado at twilight, at the foot of the Rockies – Wikipedia Image by Phil Armitage
Anthony Watts complained that I don’t read his blog closely enough, or often enough. He may rue the day he made that complaint.
Browsing over there I found a post hidden under a headline, “A UHI Tale of Two Cities.” I say “hidden” because Watts once again falls victim to the Dunning-Kruger syndrome of using an acronym, UHI, which sounds sciency but is in fact confusing to anyone not following the debate closely. I’m science literate, I’ve done research, I’ve done air pollution research, I’ve served state, federal and local governmental bodies working on environmental issues, and “UHI” didn’t ring any bells with me. It’s a MEGO phrase, in other words: My Eyes Glaze Over.
It took five clicks, but I discovered UHI is “urban heat island,” the well-worried-over effect of cities, with all their concrete, asphalt and steel, holding heat longer than surrounding countryside. In some cases, it is hypothesized that these urban heat islands affect or create their own weather. In the airline industry we worried about late afternoon thunderstorms that continued well past historical evening limits (and I suspect airline meteorologists and flight schedulers still worry about the issue, but I’ve been out of it for well over a decade).
For the study of global warming, the issues are simple but important: Do temperature measures made in or near big cities inaccurately show warming that is wholly local, and mislead scientists into thinking there is global warming? Or is some of the supposed heat island effect instead due to global warming? And, if it the urban heat island effect is mostly local, should we worry about it when developing policies to combat global warming and preserve our forests, wildlands and wildlife, wildernesses. oceans, rivers, farmlands and urban areas, and modern life?
Southwest quadrant of Boulder Colorado, showing greenbelt and trails – image from city website with information on greenbelt use and open space regulations, and maps. Boulder’s greenbelt open space and wild lands may get more visitors than nearby Rocky Mountain National Park.
In the post at Watts’s site, this is stated (from Watts? from someone else? Who can tell?):
Conclusion:
We have two weather stations in similarly sited urban environments. Until 1965 they tracked each other very closely. Since then, Fort Collins has seen a relative increase in temperature which tracks the relative increase in population. UHI is clearly not dead.
Watts misses much of the story.
In the middle 1960s and into the early 1970s Boulder, Colorado, made conscious and careful attempts to preserve its environmental quality. In 1967 Boulder created a greenbelt plan that started the processes to preserve an open space belt around the city, to preserve wild lands and to provide a sink for air pollutants and other effects of the city. In the early 1970s the city limited city growth to assure environmental quality.
Alternatives to Growth Oregon (AGO) featured an excerpt from a book detailing several growth-controlling actions by American cities as well and succinctly as anything else I’ve found (excerpted from Better Not Bigger by Eben Fodor)
In 1967, Boulder voters approved one of the nation’s first locally funded greenbelt systems. They used a local sales tax increase of 0.4 percent to finance open space land acquisitions. As of 1998, Boulder had raised $116 million and acquired 33,000 acres of greenways and mountain parks. The greenbelt system serves as a natural growth boundary, defining the limits of the city with open space and parkland. This natural boundary helps to block urban sprawl and “leapfrog” development. The greenbelt has also helped protect the quality of life in Boulder as the city has grown. It is said that more people use the greenbelt system each year than visit nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. As an added measure, Boulder established a building height limitation of 55 feet in 1971 to preserve the view of the Rockies. The city and surrounding county have cooperated on planning and growth-management policies and jointly adopted the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. A city-county study in 1970 showed the area’s population doubling in 20 years to 140,000. This projection alarmed many residents and prompted discussions about optimum population size. A public opinion survey found that more than 70 percent of respondents favored population stabilization near the 100,000 level.
In November, 1971 Boulder citizens set another first when they placed an initiative on the ballot to create a charter amendment setting a maximum population limit for the city. Voters narrowly defeated the initiative. The defeat may have been partly due to an alternative referendum placed on the same ballot by the city council. This second referendum was approved by 70 percent of voters and directed local government to “take steps necessary to hold the rate of growth in the Boulder Valley to a level substantially below that experiences in the 1960’s.” This important decision has led to a number of experimental growth-management policies that are still being fine-tuned today.
More information on greenbelts, how they work and why they are such a great idea, can be found from the Trust for Public Lands (also here), among other sources.
Fort Collins is a college town, like Boulder, and loaded with people interested in preserving the environment. Colorado State is the state’s Land Grant College (Morrill Act), the official repository of studies of protecting and wisely using the lands of Colorado. But Fort Collins did not create a green belt. Development in Fort Collins follows rules, but rules set by more traditional zoning and protection regulations than Boulder’s green belt.
Exploring Old Town Fort Collins by bicycle – City of Fort Collins photo
Watts’s blog lays the differences in temperatures between Boulder and Fort Collins since 1965 entirely at the feet of rising population, and an assumption that rising population means more concrete, asphalt and steel (Watts writing, or someone else?). Analysis of population growth from any serious statistical viewpoint, comparing Fort Collins-Loveland SMSA against the Boulder MSA (or Denver-Boulder SMSA) is lacking. This is probably more a reminder that Watts’s blog is not engaged in serious scientific analysis global warming from a global view — nor even a national, state or regional view. The comparison is simple, on population and temperature, and probably not sustainable to the point Watts suggests he wants to take it.
The population of the City of Boulder grew less than the population of the City of Fort Collins grew. That appears to be enough for Watts.
Check with the public officials of Boulder, especially those in charge of development and zoning. They’ll let you know in a hurry that Boulder’s slower-than-Fort-Collins growth is intentional. While the Boulder plan technically has no upper limit, it slows growth so that environmental quality can be maintained, especially the greenbelt, with its manifold recreation opportunities.
Fort Collins has a lot of good recreation, too. The Cache de Poudre River offers great river running within 40 minutes of downtown in the summer, and the local National Forests and other public lands offer camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, and I imagine, snowmobiling in winter. There are bike paths through Fort Collins — but not the green, automobile-free style of trails available all around Boulder.
Scouts climbing at Camp Ben DelaTour, outside of Fort Collins – Longs Peak Council BSA photo
Perhaps most important, Fort Collins experiences “leapfrog” development that Boulder specifically spurned 40 years ago. New businesses cluster along roads into town, frequently just out of the city limits and beyond the zoning rules of the city, at least until the city annexes the land and its problems. This is the traditional growth model for American cities. What it ensures is urban sprawl and suburban growth. It also virtually guarantees that there will be no preserved greenlands around the city. Green land, rural or more wild, get developed in sprawl.
Here’s the question Watts and his collaborators don’t deal with: How much of Boulder’s cooler climate is due to the greenbelt, and how much due to the striving for wise development instead of sprawl? Considering Boulder’s proximity to Denver and explosive growth there, the fact that Boulder’s climate is cooler than Fort Collins’s, according to Watts, suggests even more strongly that tough protection of the environment can work wonders, if not near-miracles.
Who is Anthony Watts to claim that Boulder’s cooler climate is not the result of careful planning to preserve the environment, initiated by Boulder’s visionaries 50 years ago?
Perhaps more critically: Doesn’t Boulder demonstrate that planning that stops global warming, is feasible, practical, economical, and perhaps, preferable? Doesn’t the greenbelt, and lower temperatures, suggest that we can kill the urban heat island effect, to the betterment of local living standards?
There is a moral to the story of development in Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado. That moral has very little, if anything, to do with heat islands. It is instead a model to tell us that planning to avoid environmental disaster is the wise thing to do. Anthony Watts has the charts to prove it.
Notes:
Update, James Madison Day (3-16-2010): Watts still doesn’t get it. In a post today he wrote:
My last few posts have described a new method for quantifying the average Urban Heat Island (UHI) warming effect as a function of population density, using thousands of pairs of temperature measuring stations within 150 km of each other. The results supported previous work which had shown that UHI warming increases logarithmically with population, with the greatest rate of warming occurring at the lowest population densities as population density increases.
Comparing Fort Collins with Boulder, and noting that Fort Collins grew faster, is an inadequate explanation for more warming in Fort Collins, about 40 miles north of Boulder. Boulder has a greenbelt designed to frustrate global warming, locally and globally. To fail to account for the effect of a massive green belt of 33,000 acres — more than double the size of the city’s 16,000 acres — is a failure of science. If Watts’s methodology misses such factors that slap an unbiased viewer in the face, you’ve gotta wonder what else he’s missing. If he can’t see a greenbelt twice the size of the city, surrounding the city, what else has he overlooked?
Plus there is this: Assume for a moment that he proves a heat island effect exists (a proposal unquestioned in meteorology and atmospheric sciences for a generation, by the way) — the question he’s seeking to prove is that urban heat islands skew official temperature readings enough to falsely indicate global warming. To skew measurements that include thousands of at-sea sensing devices, and rural areas around the world, there would have to be an massive effect that would be immediately obvious in the cities causing the effect: They would melt.
Flatirons rock formations, on Green Mountain, near Boulder, Colorado – Wikimedia photo by Jesse Varner
21 Comments | Clean Water Act, Climate change, climate_change, Environmental protection, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Natural history, Natural resources, Outdoor Recreation, Politics, Urbanization | Tagged: Boulder, Climate change, Colorado, Environmental protection, Fort Collins, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Politics, Research, UHI, Urban Heat Island, Urbanization | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
James Madison joined the world on March 16, 1751. Tuesday is the 259th anniversary of his birth.
James Madison University, appropriately, made hoopla during the whole week in 2009. What about this year?
David Edwin (1776–1841). James Madison, President of the United States. Engraving after painting by Thomas Sully. Philadelphia: W.H. Morgan, ca.1809–1817. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (107.01.00)
James Madison’s Orange County home offers free admission all day Tuesday in honor of the fourth president’s 259th birthday.
Born 1751 at Port Conway in King George while on a visit to his grandmother, Madison was raised at Montpelier, the oldest of 12 children. He is buried on the grounds of his lifelong home in the family cemetery, site of a special ceremony in honor of his birthday March 16 at 1:30 p.m.
Former Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene Hickock will deliver remarks at the cemetery along with Quantico Marine Corps Base Chief of Staff Col. Thompson Gerke, who will lay a wreath on the fourth president’s grave on behalf of President Barack Obama. Numerous other groups will also honor Madison by placing wreaths on his grave Tuesday.
The U.S. Marine Corps has a long-standing tradition of attending the annual birthday ceremony because of Madison’s connection to the naval force’s founding. As Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, Madison recommended sending a squadron of naval ships to fight pirates off the coast of Africa, ultimately leading to their demise by 1805.
As president, Madison again called on the Marines to lead the nation during the War of 1812.
Nice of the Marines to show. Nice of President Obama to send a wreath. Maybe we can understand why Republicans wish to avoid any celebration of Madison.
Resources:
1 Comment | Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Icons of history, James Madison, Presidents, Religious Freedom, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: Bill of Rights, Father of the Constitution, First Amendment, founders, History, James Madison, James Madison's Birthday, March 16, Religious Freedom, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Helen Keller at her typewriter, with Polly Thompson, 1933 - American Foundation for the Blind photo
Caption from the American Foundation for the Blind: “This photograph, taken in their home, shows Helen and Polly in front of two large windows. The light is bright outside, and the curtains on the windows are pulled back. Helen is sitting at her typewriter, describing something with her hands to Polly, who is leaning towards her, smiling. Helen has on a dark dress with small light flowers and white trim on the neck and cuffs. Polly is wearing a long black dress, with a white pearl necklace.”
Moral of the photo: “So don’t tell me you can’t do it.” “So don’t tell me you don’t have time to write.” “If Helen Keller could write books on a typewriter — she who could neither see nor hear — I don’t want any excuse from you that has the word ‘can’t’ in it.”
What moral, or other rant, would you propose?
5 Comments | History, Technology, Typewriters | Tagged: 1933, Helen Keller, History, Technology, typewriter | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You’re internet and culture savvy — you probably already know all about this stuff.
OK Go’s music appeals to many. The appeal convinced a major record label, Capitol/EMI, to sign the band to a deal. OK Go worked hard to promote the music of the band, including videos. Capitol looked at the videos, intensely creative works of art on their own, and pulled in the reins. Okay to show the vids, the label said, but don’t allow downloads . . .
Minor twist on the old band meets label, band wins label story: OK Go got out of the contract. They lost the label.
Now they’ve got an astounding new video to go viral, one that simply delights younger viewers and brings in older viewers with whispers of “shades of Rube Goldberg!” (Who was Rube Goldberg? Younger readers go here.)
After the overwhelming success of the video for its 2006 song “Here It Goes Again,” in which its four band members execute a tightly choreographed dance routine built around a handful of treadmills, OK Go has lofty standards to live up to. With roughly 50 million views on YouTube, “Here It Goes Again” stands as one of the most popular music videos of the Internet era.
Not one to shy away from a challenge, the band set about constructing a painstakingly executed two-story Rube Goldberg machine, set to trigger in time to the music for its latest video, “This Too Shall Pass.” Although it starts out small, with a toy truck knocking over some dominoes, the contraptions that make up the machine rapidly get larger and much more complex — pianos are dropped, shopping carts come crashing down ramps, and one band member is launched headlong through a wall of boxes. After assembling a team of dozens of engineers to construct the set, more than 60 takes were needed to get everything working just right during filming.
Toughest part? EMI, parent of Capitol, didn’t want to allow downloads of the music or video.
The band’s label, EMI, didn’t see things the same way. In an effort to maintain some control over the dissemination of the music video, EMI denied listeners the ability to embed it on their own Web sites and blogs. After receiving a deluge of complaints, the band eventually persuaded EMI to enable embedding. Soon afterward, however, OK Go parted ways with EMI to start its own record label, Paracadute.
NPR’s audio story is six minutes of fun, and learning. Copyright, embedding and download issues — aren’t these the frontlines of new media legal discussion?
Personal quandary: I’m not sure that I don’t like this version of the song, with the Notre Dame marching band, better than the Rube Goldberg version. What do you think?
Personal confession: Problems of mishearing lyrics abound. I listened probably a dozen times thinking the refrain was “When the money comes.” It makes more sense, and is much less cynical and wooish, with the real lyric, “When the morning comes.”
More:
4 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Creativity, History, Internet, Law, Music | Tagged: computers, copyright, Downloads, Electronic Media, Entertainment, History, Internet, Music, Music Video, OK Go, This Too Shall Pass, Viral Marketing, Viral Videos | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
With Henry Louis Mencken as his father.
No, that’s not really what they claim (I think; sometimes it’s difficult to tell). But what happened, and how it spread virally through websites of birthers and Obama haters, should provide a moral to someone’s story.
To demonstrate how easy it is to create hoax claims about Obama and birth certificates, somebody created a false MySpace page, and a story of an office supply store employee who helped the Obama campaign generate a false birth certificate.
Birthers jumped on the story as proof that the Obama birth certificate is false. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. Story at the aptly-named and fully entertaining Oh, For Goodness Sake! which seems dedicated to debunking all the birthers’ craziness (a mother lode of hoaxes and gullibility to be sure).
Santayana’s Ghost wags his finger, and Mencken’s Ghost has gone out in search of stronger beer. You tell ’em it’s voodoo history, you tell ’em it’s a hoax, they still suck it up. Dr. Kate, New Mexico Paralegal, Texas Darlin’, Free Republic, Orly Taitz, Tea Baggers, we know what you are and we don’t want to haggle about the price. We ain’t buyin’.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Birth Certificate, Historic documents, History, Hoaxes, President Obama, Presidential Eligibility, Presidents, Voodoo history | Tagged: Barack Obama, Birth Certificate, Birthers, History, Hoaxes, President Obama, Presidential Eligibility, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas Tribune quickly establishes itself as a Really Useful journal on Texas politics, especially with features like this summary of the proposed Texas social studies standards, with comments on changes and the history of the changes.
For example, explaining an insulting cut of Texas and African American heroes, Texas Tribune explains:
Tuskegee Airman Commander dumped: Board member McLeroy made the motion to pull Oveta Culp Hobby and Benjamin O. Davis from this standard. Hobby — a Houston newspaper publisher, the director the federal health department in the 1950s, and the wife of Texas Governor William P. Hobby — shows up elsewhere, in the 7th grade curriculum. Davis, however, does not. Davis was the first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force and the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen in the World War II. The board did insert a phrase on the “contributions of the Tuskegee Airman” in the next section.
Straightforward explanation. If it raises your ire, it’s not because the writing is inflammatory, but because the facts are so clearly presented.
Tip of the old scrub brush to the Texas Freedom Network and their e-mail alerts.
Leave a Comment » | Education, Education Administration, Education quality, Historic documents, History, History Revisionism, Social Studies, State school boards, TEKS, Texas | Tagged: Benjamin O. Davis, Education, education standards, History, Oveta Culp Hobby, Social Studies, state board of education, Texas, Texas Tribune | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A couple of months can make a big difference. Can.
A difference which way?
Two months ago the Texas State Board of Education suspended its revamping of social studies standards — the efforts to grind the standards into a right-wing crutch were so controversial that hearings, discussion and amending proposed standards took up more time than allotted. SBOE delayed final votes until March 10.
Today.
Last week Texas voted in primary elections. Several board members’ terms are up. Two incumbents lost primary challenges, Don McLeroy, the Boss Tweed of the right wing cultural war ring, and Geraldine Miller, a long-term veteran from Dallas, whose very conservative views cast her as a moderate among SBOE members. Both are Republicans.
How will those primary losses affect them and their work on the board?
In addition, other members of the culture war ring are retiring, including Cynthia Dunbar. Will the lame ducks be content to vote up the changes urged by history and economic professionals and professional educators, or will they do as McLeroy suggested they need to do earlier, and fight against the recommendations of experts?
How will the lame ducks walk and quack?
Stakes are high. New York Times Magazine featured the culture wars on the cover on Valentine’s Day (you should read the article). Texas Monthly weighed in against the culture wars, too — a surprise to many Texans.
Cynicism is difficult to swim against. I expect McLeroy to try as best he can to make social studies standards a monument to right wing bigotry and craziness. We’ve already seen SBOE vote to delete a wonderful children’s book from even being mentioned because the text author shares a name with a guy who wrote a book on socialism earlier.
Most of us watching from outside of Austin (somebody has to stay back and grade the papers and teach to the test . . .) expect embarrassments. On English and science standards before, the culture war ring tactics were to make a flurry of last-minute, unprinted and undiscussed, unannounced amendments apparently conspired to gut the standards of accuracy (which would not make the right wing political statements they want) and, too often, rigor. Moderates on the board have not had the support mechanisms to combat these tactics successfully — secret e-mail and telephone-available friends standing by to lend advice and language on amendments. In at least two votes opponents of the culture war voted with the ring, not knowing that innocent-sounding amendments came loaded.
In a test of the No True Scotsman argument, religious people will be praying for Texas kids and Texas education. Meanwhile, culture warriors at SBOE will work to frustrate those prayers.
Oy.
Thomas Jefferson toyed with the idea of amendment the U.S. Constitution to provide a formal role for the federal government in guaranteeing education, which he regarded as the cornerstone of freedom and a free, democratic-style republic. Instead, American primary and secondary education are governed by more than 15,000 locally-elected school boards with no guidance from the national government on what should be taught. Alone among the industrial and free nations of the world, the U.S. has no mechanism for rigorous national standards on what should be taught.
For well over a century a combined commitment to educating kids better than their parents helped keep standards high and achievement rising. Public education got the nation through two world wars, and created a workforce that could perform without peer on Earth in producing a vibrant and strong economy.
That shared commitment to quality education now appears lost. Instead we have culture warriors hammering teachers and administrators, insisting that inaccurate views of Jefferson and history be taught to children, perhaps to prevent them from ever understanding what the drive for education meant to freedom, but surely to end Jeffersonian-style influences in the future.
Texas’s SBOE may make the case today that states cannot be trusted with our children’s future, and that we need a national body to create academic rigor to preserve our freedom. Or they will do the right thing.
Voters last week expressed their views that SBOE can’t be trusted to do the right thing. We’re only waiting to see how hard McLeroy is willing to work to put his thumb in the eye of Big Tex.
More:
1 Comment | Cargo Cults, Economics, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Government, History, History Revisionism, Rampant stupidity, Social Studies, State school boards, Texas, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo history, War on Education | Tagged: Culture Wars, Don McLeroy, Economics, Education, Education reform, Government, History, Rampant stupidity, Social Studies, Texas, Texas State Board of Education, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Three earthquakes in a week do not make a swarm. Interesting that the last post on an earthquake in Oklahoma drew earthquake conspiratorialists and “skeptics.” Too many people distrust all science and sources of information these days.
Here’s the dirt on Oklahoma’s shaking in the last week, from the U.S. Geological Service site:
Earthquake List for Map Centered at 36°N, 97°W
Update time = Sat Mar 6 18:00:02 UTC 2010
Here are the earthquakes in the Map Centered at 36°N, 97°W area, most recent at the top.
(Some early events may be obscured by later ones.)
Click on the underlined portion of an earthquake record in the list below for more information.
| MAG | UTC DATE-TIME y/m/d h:m:s |
LAT deg |
LON deg |
DEPTH km |
LOCATION | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAP | 3.1 | 2010/03/05 20:35:13 | 35.608 | -96.783 | 5.0 | 3 km ( 2 mi) E of Sparks, OK |
| MAP | 2.5 | 2010/03/03 04:35:17 | 35.549 | -97.282 | 5.0 | 2 km ( 1 mi) SSE of Jones, OK |
| MAP | 4.1 | 2010/02/27 22:22:27 | 35.557 | -96.747 | 3.3 | 9 km ( 5 mi) SE of Sparks, OK |
This isn’t unusual at all, of course. I think many people just don’t understand that earthquakes happen all the time, but they usually get crowded out of the newspaper because no one really cares.
For contrast, take a look at this animated map of a strip a little wider than Utah, covering from north of the Yellowstone Caldera to Arizona. Run the animation. Generally on any day there will have been at least two dozen earthquakes in the previous week, several magnitude 3, occasionally a magnitude 4 thrown in.
Almost none of those quakes make any news.
Maybe it’s the Earth, laughing. We can hope.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.(Excerpted from “Solitude,” 1917, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919))
1 Comment | earthquakes, Geography - Physical, geology, History, Journalism, Natural history, News, Newspapers, Poetry, Science | Tagged: denialism, earthquakes, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, geography, geology, History, Journalism, Oklahoma, Science, Skepticism, Solitude | 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 