March 20, 2011
2010’s Lurie Award Winner for cartooning was another Brazilian — as in 2007. The subject is global warming, with a wistful look at what might happen:
Lurie Award Winner, 2010 - Raimundo Waldez Da C. Duarte in the publication Amazonia, in Brazil
Ice continues to melt at the South Pole, alas. How to break it to the penguins?
Cartoonist Raimundo Waldez Da C. Duarte, Amazonia, Brazil
Raimundo Waldez Da C. Duarte took $10,000 from the award. He cartoons for Amazonia in Brazil.
You may view the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place cartoons, and ten citations for excellence, at the Lurie Award site.
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Cartoons, Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, History, United Nations | Tagged: Cartoons, Climate change, Global warming, History, Lurie Award, Raimunda Waldez Da C. Duarte, Ranan Lurie, UN Correspondents Association | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
March 20, 2011
Yes, it’s a tease. Drat. Just a trailer for the film.
But how exquisite is just the trailer!
Yellowstone National Park Orientation Film (excerpt) from Northern Light Productions on Vimeo.
Northern Light Productions made the film for the “Canyon Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone National Park. The film offers a compelling overview of the ‘big picture’ geology that has shaped and continues to influence Yellowstone and its ecosystem.”
Big picture geology? How about making this film available to schools to talk about geology, geography, and history?
Yellowstone National Park annually gets about three million visitors. Yellowstone is one of those places that ever American should see — but at that rate, it would be more than 100 years before everybody gets there.
We need good, beautifully shot, well-produced, interesting films on American landmarks in the classroom.
How do we get this one freed for America’s kids, Yellowstone Park?
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1 Comment | Geography - Physical, geology, History, National Parks, Natural history, Technology in the classroom, Travel, Video and film, Yellowstone | Tagged: Classroom technology, Education, film, geography, geology, History, Natural history, Travel, Yellowstone National Park | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 19, 2011
Rollback Malaria (RBM) was established in 1998 in part to reinvigorate the worldwide fight against malaria, and in part to facilitate the negotiations for what became the Stockholm Convention, the Persistent Organic Pesticides Treaty of 2001.
That’s about the time the ungodly assault on WHO and Rachel Carson started, by hysterical DDT advocates. We now know that Roger Bate, Richard Tren, Donald Roberts and their comrades in pens are stuck in that 1998 fight.
Here’s a short account, from RBM, about just what happened:
The DDT Controversy
In 1999 the RBM Secretariat was called upon to help resolve a controversy emerging from intergovernmental negotiations to establish an international environmental treaty. At the centre of this controversy was DDT, former hero of the malaria eradication campaign and current totemic villain of the environmental movement. The treaty being negotiated was intended to eliminate the production and use of twelve persistent organic pollutants. DDT, still used for malaria control in over 20 countries, was included among ‘the dirty dozen’ chemicals slated for elimination, eliciting a strong reaction from public health activists and malaria specialists who claimed that its elimination would result in unacceptable increases in malaria morbidity and mortality. Environmental specialists and others claimed that environmentally friendly alternatives to DDT, although more expensive, could easily be deployed to guard against such a negative impact.
The controversy over the role of DDT in malaria vector control and the dangers posed to the environment escalated and attracted considerable media attention. The controversy was perpetuated in part because of a relatively weak evidence base on the human toxicity of DDT, the cost-effectiveness of proposed alternatives, and the probable impact of public health use of DDT (compared to agricultural use) on the environment. Resolution was also hampered by the relative lack of public health expertise among the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee delegates, who were primarily active in the fields of foreign and environmental policy.
The challenges presented to the RBM Secretariat in responding to the controversy were many and varied. They included: evaluation of the evidence base and the drafting of policy guidance (a WHO normative role); a major communications effort; and the establishment of new cross-sectoral partnerships and working relationships. In the process, RBM formed new and highly effective ‘partnerships’ or ‘working relations’ with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the US Environmental Protection Agency, the environmental policy apparatus of core RBM partners, as well as a variety of health and environmental NGOs. RBM conducted country and informal expert consultations and convened and chaired a special working group on DDT which was able to establish a position on the use of the insecticide in public health and the process for evaluating and moving to alternatives. The weight of WHO’s technical authority contributed greatly toward establishing the credibility of the working group. Information about the treaty negotiations and the WHO position on DDT was disseminated to health specialists via the WHO regional networks and to treaty focal points via UNEP.
The RBM Secretariat led the WHO delegation to all meetings of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee and prepared information and media events for each, supporting the participation of health/malaria specialists from a number of countries. The RBM Secretariat also served as the media focal point on malaria and DDT and provided interviews and information to all major media, as well as presentations to professional meetings and interest groups.
RBM’s objectives throughout this process were:
- to establish consensus on the present and future role of DDT and alternatives in malaria control;
- to encourage greater involvement of public health specialists in country-level discussions about the treaty and in country delegations to the negotiating sessions;
- to provide information to negotiators and others that would reduce controversy and result in a win-win situation for public health and the environment (in which the longer term goal of DDT elimination is achieved through strengthened, more robust malaria control);
- to benefit from the media attention to inform the public about malaria; and
- to mobilize resources to support malaria control from outside the health sector.
All of these objectives have been met and the final treaty, known as the ‘Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants’ provides for the continued public health use of DDT and international assistance for the development and implementation of alternatives.
Resources to support the initial work of the RBM Secretariat were provided by environmental agencies/offices. In addition, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the WHO Regional Office for the Americas (AMRO) and most recently the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) have been awarded project development grants from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to promote regional efforts to strengthen malaria control and reduce reliance on DDT.
From Final Report of the External Evaluation of RBM, Roll Back Malaria to Date, Chapter 2, page 15 (circa 2001).
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Leave a Comment » | DDT, Health care, History, Malaria, medicine, Politics, United Nations, WHO - World Health Organization | Tagged: DDT, Health care, History, Malaria, Persistent Organic Pesticides Treaty, Politics, Roll Back Malaria, Stockholm Convention, UN, WHO, World Health Organization | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 18, 2011
Photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan toured the western territories — not yet states — for either the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the U.S. Geological Survey, around 1868 and 1869. Color photography hadn’t been perfected. His plates were black and white only.
He had been one of the photographers who captured parts of the Civil War on film, with particularly poignant photos of the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, within hours after the battle ended on July 4, 1863.
O’Sullivan’s photos appear in the collection at the Library of Congress, and at the George Eastman House (Eastman was the founder of Kodak, as you know).
O’Sullivan’s photos show the mineral and mining operations of Nevada, Utah and Idaho, and Arizona and New Mexico, so far that I’ve found. Particularly in the mountains, the places he photographed can be tracked down today.
In this post we compare O’Sullivan’s photo up what he called “Great Cottonwood Canon of the Wahsatch,” what is today one of the beautiful canyons leading out of Salt Lake City, Big Cottonwood, in the Wasatch Front. O’Sullivan took a shot up the canyon, then very much unroaded, at an enormous block of granite that came to be known as Storm Mountain.
In 1869:
"Great Cottonwood Canyon, Wahsatch Mountains," 1869 photo by Timothy H. O'Sullivan - USGS photo from Eastman collection
Rich Legg of Salt Lake City captured the same mountain in 2006, and graciously consented to let us use it here for comparison. This is Storm Mountain, now:
From LeggNet:
Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, 2006 - photo by Rich Legg, copyright and rights reserved; image here by express permission
Note from LeggNet blog: This recent capture was made in Big Cottonwood Canyon just outside of Salt Lake City. The striking shadows along with the jagged ridges create a dramatic lighting effect.
Legg’s camera and film allowed a quicker shot, I’ll wager (if he used film at all — it may be an electronic image).
The granite didn’t change much. Storm Mountain is literally a fraction of a mile outside the city limits of Salt Lake City. A photo the other way would show dramatic change. A photo of Storm Mountain, which consists chiefly of naked granite, appears almost unchanged in over a century. It’s difficult even to find places where the vegetation has changed.
In the past 20 years we have seen comparisons of America’s and the world’s glaciers, from photos through the late 19th and 20th centuries, compared to photos of today. The archives of landscape photos held by groups like the George Eastman House offer opportunities for historians and land managers and policy makers to compare American lands from more than a century ago, to those same lands today. Much of those older photo archives are available on line, at least for searching. Will scholars make methodical use of these resources?
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Leave a Comment » | Change Over Time, Geography - Political, George Washington, History, Mnemonics, Physics, Vaccinations | Tagged: Big Cottonwood Canyon, Change Over Time, geography, geology, History, Manifest Destiny, Mining, photography, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 16, 2011
A post from Nicholas Meier at Deborah Meier’s Blog:
Here are some Headlines from newspapers over the years. Can you guess when they were written?
1. “Attack Mounted on Dropouts/City Sets Standards for Schools”
2. “New York’s Great Reading Score Scandal”
3. “Diagnostic reading tests are being given this week to 150,000 high school students as the first step in a new program—the largest and most systematic ever. …We intend to follow through…to overcome deficiencies.”
4. “The University of California (Berkeley) found that 30 to 40 percent of entering freshmen were not proficient in English.”
5. “Hope for the Blackboard Jungle: … Every year New Yorkers’ performance had been getting a little worse, until by YEAR? only 32 percent of the city’s pupils [were] doing as well or better than the national average.”
6. “Even Boston’s ‘brightest students’ didn’t know ‘whether water expanded or contracted when it freezes.’ And while 70 percent of this elite group knew that the U.S. had imposed an embargo in 1812 only five knew what ’embargo’ meant.”
7. “Tougher Standards in Our High. The average freshman is a year and three months behind national standards in reading.”
8. “City Pupils Remain Behind … Official Asserts the Tests Suggest Difficulty in Early Grades. Last fall 40.1 percent were reported on grade level or above … but in March, 43 percent … were reading at grade level or above”; and “Bleak drop out stats are raising concern.”
9. “Our standard for high school graduation has slipped badly. Fifty years ago a high school diploma meant something. … We have misled our students. … and our nation.”
10, “During the past 40 or 50 years those who are responsible for education have progressively removed from the curriculum … the western culture which produced the modern democratic state.”
The quotes above come from mainstream publications over the past 150 years. The earliest is 1845, the latest . . .
[Answers below the fold]
Read the rest of this entry »
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Leave a Comment » | Education, Education quality, Education reform, History, Newspapers, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: Education, Education quality, Education reform, History, Newspapers, Teachers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 15, 2011
Teaching is a lonely profession, oddly enough. All too often teachers get stuck on an island away from other adults, away from socializing with colleagues even just a few feet away in the next room. Different from most other professions, teachers in most schools are required to function without basic support for much of what they do, or with minimal support.
Consequently, teachers organizing to support teachers is difficult and too rare.
Unions become vital organizations to fight against unhealthy social isolation, to fight for teachers, to fight for education.
On March 22 union teachers in New York will wear red as an expression of solidarity with and support for teachers under attack in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and dozens of other places that we don’t know much about because, after all, brutal legislative attacks on teachers and teaching are so commonplace these days — “dog bites man” stories.
I was asked to join a group of bloggers who will blog on the importance of teaching, the importance of education, and why we support teacher unions on March 22.
If you teach and blog, will you join us? If you had a teacher who made a difference in your life, and blog, will you join us?
Here’s an invitation from our group, EDUSolidarity:
Please join us!
As we all know, teachers and our unions, along with those of other public sector employees, face unprecedented attacks in the national media and from local and state governments. It is easy for politicians and the media to demonize the “unions” and their public faces; it is far more difficult to demonize the millions of excellent teachers who are proud union members. Those of us who are excellent teachers and who stand in solidarity with our unions are probably no stranger to the question “Well, why are you involved with the union if you’re a good teacher?” It’s time for us to stand up and answer that question loudly and clearly.
On Tuesday, March 22, teachers in NYC will wear red in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and elsewhere. We also stand with teachers in places like Idaho, California, and Texas who are facing massive layoffs. We would like to take this stand on the web as well. We encourage you to publish a piece on March 22 entitled “Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions.” In this piece, please explain your own reasons for being a proud union member and/or supporter. Including personal stories can make this a very powerful piece. It would be great to also explain how being a union member supports and enables you to be the kind of teacher that you are. We want these posts to focus not only on our rights, but also on what it takes to be a great teacher for students, and how unions support that.
After you have published your post, please share it through the form that will go live on March 22 at http://www.edusolidarity.us. Posts should also be shared on Twitter using the tag #edusolidarity.
In Solidarity,
Ken Bernstein – Social Studies, MD – teacherken
Anthony Cody – Science Instructional Coach, CA – Living in Dialogue
Ed Darrell – Social Studies, TX – Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
Nancy Flanagan – Educational Consultant, MI – Teacher in a Strange Land
Jonathan Halabi – Math, NY – JD2718
Jamie Josephson – Social Studies, DC – Dontworryteach
Stephen Lazar – Social Studies/English, NY – Outside the Cave
Deborah Meier – Professor of Education, NY – Deborah Meier’s Blog
Doug Noon – Elementary, AK – Borderland
Kate Nowak – Math, NY – f(t)
Jose Vilson – Math, NY – The Jose Vilson
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4 Comments | Economics, Education, Education reform, Education spending, Government, History, Labor and unions, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Teaching, Texas | Tagged: Economics, Education, Education reform, EDUSolidarity, Government, History, labor, March 22 2010, Teacher Pay, Teaching, unions | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 14, 2011
E=energy; m=mass; c=speed of light
Happy Einstein Day! Almost fitting that he was born on π Day, no? I mean, is there an E=mc² Day?
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany, to Hermann and Pauline Einstein. 26 years later, three days after his birthday, he sent off the paper on the photo-electric effect, the paper that would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics five years later, in 1921. In that same year of 1905, he published three other papers, solving the mystery of Brownian motion, describing what became known as the Special Theory of Relativity and solving the mystery of why measurements of the light did not show any effects of motion as Maxwell had predicted, and a final paper that noted a particle emitting light energy loses mass. This final paper amused Einstein because it seemed so ludicrous in its logical extension that energy and matter are really the same stuff at some fundamental point, as expressed in the equation demonstrating an enormous amount of energy stored in atoms, E=mc².
Albert Einstein as a younger man - Nobel Foundation image
Any one of the papers would have been a career-capper for any physicist. Einstein dashed them off in just a few months, forever changing the field of physics. And, you noticed: Einstein did not win a Nobel for the Special Theory of Relativity, nor for E=mc². He won it for the photo electric effect. Irony in history.
106 years later Einstein’s work affects us every day. Relativity theory at some level I don’t understand makes possible the use Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which revolutionized navigation and mundane things like land surveying and microwave dish placement. Development of nuclear power both gives us hope for an energy-rich future, and gives us fear of nuclear war. Sometimes, even the hope of the energy rich future gives us fear, as we watch and hope nuclear engineers can control the piles in nuclear power plants damaged by earthquakes and tsunami in Japan.
If Albert Einstein was a genius at physics, he was more dedicated to pacifism. He resigned his German citizenship to avoid military conscription. His pacifism made the German Nazis nervous; Einstein fled Germany in the 1930s, eventually settling in the United States. In the U.S., he was persuaded by Leo Szilard to write to President Franklin Roosevelt to suggest the U.S. start a program to develop an atomic weapon, because Germany most certainly was doing exactly that. But Einstein refused to participate in the program himself, sticking to his pacifist views. Others could, and would, design and build atomic bombs. (Maybe it’s a virus among nuclear physicists — several of those working on the Manhattan Project were pacifists, and had great difficulty reconciling the idea that the weapon they worked on to beat Germany, was deployed on Japan, which did not have a nuclear weapons program.)
Einstein was a not-great father, and probably not a terribly faithful husband at first — though he did think to give his first wife a share of a Nobel Prize should he win it in the divorce settlement. Einstein was a good violinist, a competent sailor, an incompetent dresser, and a great character. His sister suffered a paralyzing stroke. For many months Albert spent hours a day reading to her the newspapers and books of the day, convinced that mute and appearing unconscious, she would benefit from hearing the words. He said he did not hold to orthodox religions, but could there be a greater show of faith in human spirit?
Einstein in 1950, five years before his death
When people hear clever sayings, but forget to whom the bon mots should be attributed, Einstein is one of about five candidates to whom all sorts of things are attributed, though he never said them. (Others include Lincoln, Jefferson, Mark Twain and Will Rogers). Einstein is the only scientist in that group. So, for example, we can be quite sure Einstein never claimed that compound interest was the best idea of the 20th century. This phenomenon is symbolic of the high regard people have for the man, even though so few understand what his work was, or meant.
A most interesting man. A most important body of work. He deserves more study and regard than he gets.
More, Resources:
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Leave a Comment » | Albert Einstein, Atomic Bomb, Biography, Citizenship, Franklin Roosevelt, History, Manhattan Project, Physics, Science | Tagged: 1941-1945, Albert Einstein, Atomic Bomb, Biography, Citizenship, Einstein, Franklin Roosevelt, History, Leo Szilard, Physics, pi Day, Relativity, Science, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 14, 2011
In Concord, New Hampshire, on March 11 and 12, 2011, apparently testing to see whether that little state has bad enough education standards before announcing a presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann butchered history and geography once again, according to the conservative Minnesota Independent:
“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” she said, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” an ode to the lives lost at the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
How many bites at the apple does stupid get? Has Ed Brayton picked up on this yet?
Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann
More:
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pat Carrithers.
Update: Oh, yeah, others noticed:
- New American did its damnedest to explain it away as a slip of the tongue — either assuming Bachmann is too reckless not to use prepared remarks for her first foray into New Hampshire (maybe a more serious indictment), or not paying attention to her written remarks (Was it just one more in a long string of really stupid slips of the tongue? Loose tongues sink as many ships as loose lips . . .); in another article New American falsely claimed a worldwide ban on DDT, falsely claiming the ban killed 30 million kids, and said that it disrupted food growing in America, though food crops hadn’t been sprayed with DDT for nearly a decade when its use was banned on agricultural crops in the U.S. alone. Accuracy isn’t in that animal
- And that site for undiscriminating, miseducated people, American Elephants, thought Bachmann’s earlier distortions of history just lovely.
- Peter Fenn blogging at U.S. News and World Report asks, “Why does anyone take Michelle Bachmann seriously?”
- Politico notes the long history of Bachmann getting the facts wrong, and reveals that Bachmann repeated the error about the location of the Battle of Concord at least twice in that New Hampshire swing. Bachmann can’t hire competent aides, either? Politico questions Bachmann’s basic governing competence, noting that, while she is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and should know better, she urged President Obama to follow the counsel of Gen. David Patraeus about intervention in Libya. Petraeus isn’t in the chain of command on Libya since he took over the job in Afghanistan several months ago.
- The Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor took a hands-off approach, using the Associated Press story on the gaffe
- Cartoonist Jeff Danziger, one of America’s best, puts the event into pithy perspective (see below)
- Mike the Mad Biologist, who uses one of the greatest images for free speech as his avatar, lists Bachmann as “dumber than a sack of hammers”
- Even Little Green Footballs appears to take after Bachmann, but with an account that is, after all, just the facts
Jeff Danziger
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10 Comments | Accuracy, America's founding, Bogus history, Campaigns, History, Humor, Infamous Quotes, Politics, Quotes, Voodoo history | Tagged: Bogus history, Campaigns, Concord, Education, History, Humor, Infamous Quotes, Lexington, Michelle Bachmann, Politics, Quotes, Shot heard 'round the World, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 13, 2011
7 Billion: Are you typical?
Vodpod videos no longer available.
I could see a bell-ringer in there somewhere. Who do you think ought to see this thing? What classes in public schools should see it, for what purpose?
I hope the year-long series lives up to the video. I hope there are a lot more videos to go along with it. As a piece of persuasive rhetoric, it does make a decent case for subscribing to National Geographic for a year. How’s that for rhetorical criticism?
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2 Comments | Bell Ringers, Demographics, Economics, Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Government, History, Video and film | Tagged: Bell Ringers, Demography, Economics, Education, geography, Government, History, National Geographic, video, Warm-ups | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 10, 2011
Graphics story in The Atlantic this month — “The 12 States of America.”
Looking at my print copy I was struck that most of the “states” listed — really communities of people — have lost economic ground in the past decade. Average per capita incomes dropped for most groups.
Since 1980, income inequality has fractured the nation. Click each icon to see each of the dozen states, which counties belong to them and how median income has changed over the last 30 years.
The old income inequality monster rearing its ugly, ugly head again. America is losing ground. No wonder the Republicans are discouraged — but why don’t they understand that its their policies that create the trouble?
This is a good version, but you’d do well to go check out a larger version at The Atlantic site, and read the short article by Dante Chinni and James Gimpel.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Click on any descriptor, and it will show which counties in America match that description.
Hmmm. In the headline, should that be “scars” instead of “marks?”
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11 Comments | Business, Economics, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, History, Maps, News, Political Maps, Politics, Science, Technology | Tagged: Business, Dante Chinni, Economics, geography, History, Income Inequality, James Gimpel, Maps, Politics, Technology, The Atlantic | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 10, 2011
This week, EPA bashing took front and center on the performance stage that passes as Congress these days. There is a school of thought that thinks EPA should be eviscerated because EPA is carrying out the mandate an earlier Congress gave it, to clean up the air. Especially, the recent assailants claim, EPA should not try to reduce carbon emissions, because clean air might cost something.
Steven Milloy, who makes crude and false claims against William Ruckelshaus, a great lawyer and the hero of the Saturday Night Massacre. Why does Milloy carry such a pathetic grudge?
Wholly apart from the merits, or great lack of merits to those arguments, the anti-EPA crowd is just ugly.
78-year-old William Ruckelshaus, the Hero of the Saturday Night Massacre, a distinguished lawyer and businessman, and the founding Director of EPA who was called back to clean it up after the Reagan administration scandals, granted an interview on EPA bashing to Remapping Debate, an ambitious, independent blog from the Columbia School of Journalism designed to provide information essential to policy debates that too-often gets overlooked or buried. [Remapping Debate sent a note that they are not affiliated with CSJ; my apologies for the error.]
Ruckelshaus, as always, gave gentlemanly answers to questions about playing politics with science, and bashing good, honest and diligent government workers as a method of political discourse.
Steven Milloy, one of the great carbuncles on the face of climate debate or any science issue, assaulted Ruckelshaus at Milloy’s angry, bitter blog, Green Hell. Milloy calls Ruckelshaus “a mass-murderer,” a clear invitation for someone to attack the man. Milloy wrote, cravenly:
He’s the 20th century’s only mass murderer to survive and thrive (as a venture capitalist) in the 21st century.
Milloy owes Ruckelshaus an apology and a complete retraction. I rather hope Ruckelshaus sues — while Milloy will claim the standards under New York Times vs. Sullivan as a defense, because Ruckelshaus is a public figure, I think the only question a jury would have to deal with is how much malice aforethought Milloy exhibits. Malice is obvious. Heck, there might not even be a question for a jury — Milloy loses on the law (nothing he claims against Ruckelshaus is accurate or true in any way).
This is much more damning than what got two NPR officials to lose their jobs.
Who will stand up for justice here? Rep. Upton? Rep. Boehner? Anthony Watts?
I tried to offer a correction, and since then have written Milloy demanding an apology and retraction — neither comment has surfaced yet on Milloy’s blog. Here’s the truth Milloy hasn’t printed:
No, Sweeney did not rule that DDT is not a threat to the environment. He said quite the opposite. Sweeney wrote, in his ruling:
20. DDT can have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish and estuarine organisms when directly applied to the water.
21. DDT is used as a rodenticide. [DDT was used to kill bats in homes and office buildings; this was so effective that, coupled with accidental dosing of bats from their eating insects carrying DDT, it actually threatened to wipe out some species of bat in the southwest U.S.]
22. DDT can have an adverse effect on beneficial animals.
23. DDT is concentrated in organisms and can be transferred through food chains.
On that basis, two federal courts ruled that DDT must be taken off the market completely. Sweeney agreed with the findings of the courts precisely, but he determined that the law did not give him the power to order DDT off the market since the newly-proposed labels of the DDT manufacturers restricted use to emergency health-related tasks. With the benefit of rereading the two federal courts’ decisions, Ruckelshaus noted that the courts said the power was already in the old law, and definitely in the new law. [See, for example, EDF v. Ruckelshaus, 439 F. 2d 584 (1971)]
DDT was banned from use on crops in the U.S. as an ecosystem killer. It still is an ecosystem killer, and it still deserves to be banned.
Ruckelshaus’s order never traveled outside the U.S. DDT has never been banned in most nations of the world, and even though DDT has earned a place on the list of Dirty Dozen most dangerous pollutants, even under the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty of 2001, DDT is available for use to any country who wishes to use it.
Please get your facts straight.
Would you, Dear Reader, help spread the word on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, or any other service you have, that the Brown Lobby has gone too far in it’s error-based propaganda against clean air and those who urge a better environment? Please?
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4 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, Global warming, History, Law, Libel and Slander, Malaria, Political Smear, Propaganda, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Carbon regulation, Climate change, CO2, DDT, Death Threat?, EPA, Global warming, Green Hell Blog, History, Incitement to Violence, Law, Libel and Slander, Malaria, Steven Milloy, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, William Ruckelshaus | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 4, 2011
If March 2 is Texas Day, March 4 can be U.S. Day, right?
Can’t call it Constitution Day — there are a couple of those in the fall.
March 4 is the anniversary of the enactment of the Constitution, in 1789. All the ratifying was done, Washington had been elected President, the first Congress was elected, and it was time to open for business.
In New York, neither house of Congress could get a quorum — too many members not in town yet. So the new government adjourned for a week or so.
Bad precedent, if you ask me — though, to be fair, the Congress met for a total of 210 days.
Letter from Robert Morris to Gouverneur Morris, describing the first day of the First Congress, March 4, 1789.
From Birth of a Nation: The First Federal Congress, a site at George Washington University:
This letter, written on the day established for the first meeting of the Congress, sets the scene as the members began to gather in New York City. Morris’s concern that the “public expectation seems to be so highly wound up that I think disappointment must inevitably follow after a while, nothwithstanding that I believe there will be inclination and abilities in the two houses to do every thing that reasonable and sensible men can promise to themselves, but you know well how impossible it is for public measures to keep pace with the sanguine desires of the interested, the ignorant, and the inconsiderate parts of the Community.” eloquently expressed the challenge that faced the members of the new Congress.
Odd stuff:
- New York City was bustling with 29,000 residents in 1789
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3 Comments | 1787, 1789, Historic documents, History, U.S. Congress | Tagged: America's founding, Congress, First Congress, History, March 4 1789, U.S. | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 3, 2011
Maybe we oughtta just call March 2 “Texas Day” next year:
Commemorate ’em all on one day, get it over with.
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3 Comments | 1861-1865, Civil War, History, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: Civil War, History, Sam Houston, Texas, Texas Independence Day | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 2, 2011
George Washington signed the law authorizing the first U.S. census on March 1, 1790. [True]
[Satire, below?]
I presume, then, that the post-Boston, Tea Party dates from the protests of the census beginning on March 2, 1790. “Nothing but what the founders intended in the Constitution,” was the muddled battle cry of the early Tea Partiers.
Editorials pointed out that Washington himself had presided at the Constitutional Convention, but Tea Partiers would have none of it. “If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for the ‘new King George,’ they yelled in New York City, outside Washington’s home. “Patrick Henry didn’t throw tea in Baltimore Harbor so some tyrant could ask us how many are in our family!”
Washington denied that the capital’s move to Philadelphia later that year had anything to do with the protests.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Leave a Comment » | Census, George Washington, History, Humor, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: Census, George Washington, History, Humor, Parody, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
March 2, 2011
In a meeting hall at Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texans meet to write the Texas Declaration of Independence, released March 2, 1836; image from Portal to Texas History
So, put some barbecue in the smoker, get a Shiner for you and your pet armadillo, sit back and enjoy the holiday. If you’re near Washington-on-the-Brazos, go to the ceremony. You’d better be sure you’ve got plenty of Blue Bell Ice Cream.
What? You don’t get the day off? You know, Texas schools don’t even take the day off any more.
I thought things were going to change when the Tea Party got to Austin and Washington? What happened?
Original Manuscript, Texas Declaration of Independence - Texas State Library and Archives Commission
Text from the image above:
The Unanimous
Declaration of Independence
made by the
Delegates of the People of Texas
in General Convention
at the Town of Washington
on the 2nd day of March 1836
When a government has ceased
to protect the lives, liberty and property
of the people, from whom its legitimate
powers are derived, and for the advance-
ment of whose happiness it was inst-
ituted, and so far from being a guaran-
tee for the enjoyment of those inesti-
mable and inalienable rights, becomes
an instrument in the hands of evil
rulers for their oppression.
[Complete text, and images of each page, at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission site.]
Resources for Texas Independence Day
Resources at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
3 Comments | 1836, Historic documents, History, Holidays, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: Education, History, Lesson plans, March 2, Teachers, Texas, Texas Declaration of Independence, Texas history, Texas Independence Day | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 