The “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” video, uploaded to YouTube on the evening of December 18, was made by Normand Archambault, Loïc Mireault and Félix Marquis-Poulin, students at Centre NAD, in the production simulation workshop class of the Bachelors degree in 3D Animation and Digital Design.
The video shows a royal eagle snatching a young kid while he plays under the watch of his dad. The eagle then drops the kid a few feet away. Both the eagle and the kid were created in 3D animation and integrated in to the film afterwards.
The video has already received more than 1,200,000 views on YouTube and has been mentioned by dozens of media in Canada and abroad.
The production simulation workshop class, offered in fifth semester, aims to produce creative projects according to industry production and quality standards while developing team work skills. Hoaxes produced in this class have already garnered attention, amongst others a video of a penguin having escaped the Montreal Biodôme.
Was that enough YouTube views to guarantee an A in the course?
I’ll wager the students who made the film are not “désolée” at all.
.Gif showing shadow inconsistencies used to debunk video: Caption at Poynter.org: “Earlier, social media verification experts at Storyful point to evidence of fakery, including Twitter user @thornae’s animated GIF showing inconsistencies with the eagle’s shadow.”
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East Coast son Kenny sent this video, noting his reaction was the same as the guy in the film; an encounter with a golden eagle in a Montreal park:
You can take the eagle out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the eagle.
Looks mostly like a golden eagle to me — anyone want to make the case it’s a different bird?
What’s going on in Montreal, I wonder, that would make a golden eagle think a human baby might make a good meal? (No, I don’t think the bird was trying to give the kid a thrill.)
Other reports of similar incidents around Montreal?
Update: WHAT? IT’S FAKED? Thoughtful reader Luisa in comments refers us to Chris Clarke’s Original Blog™ Coyote Crossing, which updates from expert birder Kenn Kauffman who says, as I wondered, it’s not a golden eagle, and other things look hoaxed. (While you’re looking around, check out Luisa’s Crow and Raven; bird photos that will make you jealous.) You’d think an incident like that would have made it to the newspapers and television stations in Montreal, but I’ve found nothing — have you?)
Update, December 19, 2012: Now the CBC covers the tale, noting that it is most likely a hoax. The film’s maker or YouTube poster has not defended it that I can find. Watch carefully — the “baby” doesn’t move during the time it’s on the ground, through the bird’s plucking it up and dropping it. There’s plenty of time to swap a dummy out with a real kid in the stroller while the camera is pointed away. CBC found a Montreal ornithologist who claims it looks more like an osprey than an eagle. I’ll buy that.
Real news on a topic like DDT takes a while to filter into the public sphere, especially with interest groups, lobbyists and Astro-Turf groups working hard to fuzz up the messages.
News from the DDT Expert Group of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention was posted recently at the Stockholm Convention website — the meeting was held in early December in Geneva, Switzerland.
Logo of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs Treaty) Wikipedia image
In the stuffy talk of international relations, the Stockholm Convention in this case refers to a treaty put into effect in 2001, sometimes known as the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty (POPs). Now with more than 152 signatory nations and 178 entities offering some sort of ratification (not the U.S., sadly), the treaty urges control of chemicals that do not quickly break down once released into the environment, and which often end up as pollutants. In setting up the agreement, there was a list of a dozen particularly nasty chemicals branded the “Dirty Dozen” particularly targeted for control due to their perniciousness — DDT was one of that group.
DDT can still play a role in fighting some insect-carried diseases, like malaria. Since the treaty was worked out through the UN’s health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO), it holds a special reservation for DDT, keeping DDT available for use to fight disease. Six years ago WHO developed a group to monitor DDT specifically, looking at whether it is still needed or whether its special provisions should be dropped. The DDT Expert Group meets every two years.
Stockholm Convention continues to allow DDT use for disease vector control
Fourth meeting of the DDT Expert Group assesses continued need for DDT, 3–5 December 2012, Geneva
Mosqutio larvae, WHO image
The Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention, under the guidance of the World Health Organization (WHO), allows the use of the insecticide DDT in disease vector control to protect public health.
Mosquito larvae
The Stockholm Convention lists dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known at DDT, in its Annex B to restrict its production and use except for Parties that have notified the Secretariat of their intention to produce and /or use it for disease vector control. With the goal of reducing and ultimately eliminating the use of DDT, the Convention requires that the Conference of the Parties shall encourage each Party using DDT to develop and implement an action plan as part of the implementation plan of its obligation of the Convention.
At its fifth meeting held in April 2011, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention concluded that “countries that are relying on DDT for disease vector control may need to continue such use until locally appropriate and cost-effective alternatives are available for a sustainable transition away from DDT.” It also decided to evaluate the continued need for DDT for disease vector control at the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties “with the objective of accelerating the identification and development of locally appropriate cost-effective and safe alternatives.”
The DDT Expert Group was established in 2006 by the Conference of the Parties. The Group is mandated to assess, every two years, in consultation with the World Health Organization, the available scientific, technical, environmental and economic information related to production and use of DDT for consideration by the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention in its evaluation of continued need for DDT for disease vector control.
The fourth meeting of the DDT Expert Group reviewed as part of this ongoing assessment:
Insecticide resistance (DDT and alternatives)
New alternative products, including the work of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee
Transition from DDT in disease vector control
Decision support tool for vector control.
The DDT expert group recognized that there is a continued need for DDT in specific settings for disease vector control where effective or safer alternatives are still lacking. It recommended that the use of DDT in Indoor Residual Spray should be limited only to the most appropriate situations based on operational feasibility, epidemiological impact of disease transmission, entomological data and insecticide resistance management. It also recommended that countries should undertake further research and implementation of non-chemical methods and strategies for disease vector control to supplement reduced reliance on DDT.
The findings of the DDT Expert Group’s will be presented at the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, being held back-to-back with the meetings of the conferences of the parties to the Rotterdam and Basel conventions, from 28 April to 11 May 2013, in Geneva.
Nothing too exciting. Environmentalists should note DDT is still available for use, where need is great. Use should be carefully controlled. Pro-DDT propagandists should note, but won’t, that there is no ban on DDT yet, and that DDT is still available to fight malaria, wherever health workers make a determination it can work. If anyone is really paying attention, this is one more complete and total refutation of the DDT Ban Hoax.
Rachel Carson’s ghost expresses concern that there is not yet a safe substitute for DDT to fight malaria, but is gratified that disease fighters and serious scientists now follow the concepts of safe chemical use she urged in 1962.
The list links to good versions of obscure and arcane history, as well as some major stuff — any good biography of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt, has to have some major chops going for it, in those crowded niches of good biographies of important people.
1938 U.S. postage stamp of Millard Fillmore, a 13-cent stamp for our 13th president – Wikipedia image
Millard Fillmore has been mocked, maligned, or, most cruelly of all, ignored by generations of historians–but no more! This unbelievable new biography finally rescues the unlucky thirteenth U.S. president from the dustbin of history and shows why a man known as a blundering, arrogant, shallow, miserable failure was really our greatest leader.
In the first fully researched portrait of Fillmore ever written, the reader can finally come face-to-face with a misunderstood genius. By meticulously extrapolating outrageous conclusions from the most banal and inconclusive of facts, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore reveals the adventures of an unjustly forgotten president. He fought at the Battle of the Alamo! He shepherded slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad! He discovered gold in California! He wrestled with the emperor of Japan! It is a list of achievements that puts those of Washington and Lincoln completely in the shade.
Refusing to be held back by established history or recorded fact, here George Pendle paints an extraordinary portrait of an ordinary man and restores the sparkle to an unfairly tarnished reputation.
Of course it’s parody! There’s no indication Fillmore, never a member of the military, fought at the Alamo. Fillmore never made it to California, nor was he the Mormon who discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill. In one of his greatest acts, Fillmore dispatched Commodore Perry to Japan to coerce that nation to open its doors to American sailing ships, and trade with the rest of the world. Fillmore himself did not journey to Japan, and never met the Japanese emperor, let alone wrestled the man. (After his presidency, Fillmore visited Europe; Queen Victoria is attributed with having said he was one of the handsomest men she’d ever met; he refused an honorary degree because, he said, he couldn’t read the Latin it was written in — you can’t make up the real stuff.)
Despite its clearly being a parody, however, there it is on the list of The Fix, as the best biography of Millard Fillmore.
Screen clip showing parody Fillmore biography on The Fix’s list of best presidential biographies
H. L. Mencken at approximately 12:30 a.m., April 7, 1933, at the Rennert Hotel, corner of Saratoga and Liberty Streets, 17 years later, not neglecting a sudsy anniversary – Baltimore Sun photo
The Ghost of H. L. Mencken notes that this item appeared on December 5, 2012, the anniversary of the end of Prohibition — and knocks back a brew. Every other president gets a serious biography mentioned; for Millard Fillmore, The Fix lists a hoax book as his “best presidential biography.”
A note on fairness to Mr. Pendle: Pendle has argued here before that his book does contain real history, and it’s there despite the embellishments which he says at least get the book sold. Earlier, in comments he said:
Dear Sir,
I am the author of the recently published ‘The Remarkable Millard Fillmore’, which I have just discovered has been mentioned by your website on a couple of occasions. Judging by your website’s wonderful name, and your obvious interest in making people more aware of American history, I was slightly troubled to see that you thought I treated Millard Fillmore unfairly in my book.
I don’t know if you have had a chance to read ‘TRMF’ yet, but I can assure you that while it is a faux-biography, and does indeed poke fun at Millard Fillmore’s perceived image (or lack of it), its larger target is that of presidential biographies that are unthinkingly reverential of the office of the president. The cynical revision of history, in which one man is placed at the center of the world’s events is a historical fallacy, as you are probably well aware. Yet it is one which – unlike my book – many historians perpetrate with a straight face.
In ‘TRMF’ I attempted to mock this school of biography by extrapolating the most ridiculous situations from the most basic and inconclusive of historical facts. For instance, I have Millard Fillmore stowing away to Japan, and Sumo-wrestling with the Mikado’s champion, because in real life Fillmore opened up Japan to western trade (albeit from a safe distance in Washington D.C.).
Lest you think I am playing too fast and loose with the truth (some readers have complained that they did not realize my book was a spoof, despite the picture of Millard Fillmore riding a unicorn on its cover!) my book also includes a large appendix of strange but true historical notes to show that many of the ridiculous situations I place Fillmore in were actually based on fact. By reading them I hope one can discover that even the most staid of human lives can be touched by the fantastic.
In short I come not to bury Fillmore, but to praise him, and all those forgottens who have not been granted a role as a ‘Great Man of History’ by the Academy. I very much hope that although ‘The Remarkable Millard Fillmore’ is primarily a spoof and designed to make people giggle, readers will, possibly without being aware of it, come away from the book with a better knowledge of American History than when they started it.
Yours sincerely,
George Pendle
So we are left with a little mystery. Did the WaPo reporters know that Pendle’s book is a parody, and are they saying it works wonderfully as a tool of history telling? Or, did they not know?
_____________
Update: Comes word this morning that The Fix changed its listing for Fillmore, to the Rayback book (Thanks, Lea). The column says only that it’s been “updated,” but doesn’t explain where or why. Mr. Pendle might argue his book should be there: How many books are there on Fillmore after all?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Donald Trump is at it again. His $5 million offer to get Obama’s grades mystifies me, and irritates me (why doesn’t he just call Harvard, and see what GPA was required to graduate with the honors on Obama’s diploma?). It’s clear Trump has not bothered to see whether information is available on Obama, but is instead attempting a political smear.
Should we be concerned at all? David Letterman savaged Trump on his show October 24, but then invited Trump to appear on October 25, and let Trump get away without challenging most of his big whoppers. Letterman seemed to sense he was not witnessing a political exposé, but instead was witness to the dying throes of a man whose talent and time seem to be restricted to hair design, these days.
Heh. Why should we believe Donald Trump? In addition to the manifold reasons you may have already accumulated to dismiss the guy as a crank and a crackpot, consider that we don’t have a clue about his bona fides.
Who is Donald Trump, really?I posted this originally in February 2011 — and since then, Trump has failed to release any whiff of evidence to clear up his murky background. He’s not released his birth certificate (except a forgery), he’s not been able to establish that he ever attended a college in America. In short, he’s vulnerable exactly to the type of unfair and churlish attack he’s making on President Obama.
Gratuitous picture that makes trump look funny or evil, with gratuitously misleading caption: “Donald Trump wants people to stop asking why no one, in America, can remember his high school and college days.” Alternative caption: “Donald Trump, two of his closest friends and an unnamed woman discuss politics and government policy.”
Does Trump have room to talk? His Wikipedia bio claims he attended Fordham University for a brief period (got kicked out, maybe?), but didn’t graduate. It claims he got an undergraduate degree from the Wharton School in Pennsylvania.
A search found no one from Wharton who remembers Donald Trump as a student there. Jon Huntsman, the founder of Huntsman Container and Huntsman Chemical, the guy who invented the “clamshell box” for McDonalds, is one of the most famous and wealthy Wharton grads (and also the father of Jon Huntsman, Jr., the recently resigned Obama Ambassador to China). He never saw Trump on campus at Wharton. James DePriest, the outstanding conductor now with the Oregon Symphony (and fun to watch, trust me) — he never ran into Trump on campus when he attended Wharton. There’s no record of Trump having had a roommate there. Alan Rachins, the famous actor who graduated from Wharton — not only never took a class with Trump, but said he never heard of Trump attending classes at the time.
Who is Donald Trump? Where did he come from? How come no one remembers him?
But the fog gets inkier.
Trump was not only a football standout in high school, he was a social standout, winning awards for his community involvement (although, no one at the high school in his hometown remembers his attending classes there).
But during the time he claims to have attended Fordham, no one remembers him. No social standout. No football hero. Was he ever really at Fordham?
Where did Donald Trump come from? Why does no one in his hometown high school remember him? Why did he drop out of sight at the time he claims to have attended Fordham University? Did he buy his way into a listing as an alumnus of Wharton, after so many Wharton grads don’t remember seeing him there? Who can trust a guy who worships (if he does worship at all) a “god” who strikes down the U.S. economy?
Who is Donald Trump? Why did no one at CPAC check his questionable credentials before giving Trump a national platform? Why is CPAC mum about this entire affair? Why did Fox News conspire to obscure the message and candidacy of Ron Paul, with their new darling, Donald Trump?
Worse for Trump, most of the things in this screed are factually accurate. Those who live by the inaccurate spin can die by it, too.
Scarier: Which conservative sites will have the guts to question** Trump’s secret credentials?
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind – that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty. . .
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech. . .
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I — but the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
The Mencken Society plans an event commemorating his birthday. David Donovan will speak on “H.L. Mencken and the Saturday Night Club” on Saturday, September 29, 2012 at 1:00 p.m. at the the Pratt Library’s Southeast Anchor Library, 3601 Eastern Avenue (S Conkling St), Baltimore, MD 21224. Donovan is a librarian and musicologist from the Pratt Library; the Saturday Night Club was a group of musicians with whom Mencken played piano.
This is an encore post, from August of 2008. We need to recall, an issue early in the Democratic primaries was ‘who would you want on the Hotline at 2:00 a.m.’ Sometime before the end of the primaries, a jokester mashed up a photo of candidate Barack Obama, changed the line on the phone handpiece, and added a clock at 3:00 a.m. on the wall.
Republicans picked up on the photo, and thinking it a real photo, shipped it around during the general campaign. It was a hoax then, and it still is. I found it today on Facebook, and found people defending the hoax photo as real. Oy, it will be that kind of election as Republicans get more desperate and more crude. The encore post:
The real photograph. Notice there is no clock on the wall, and the phone works properly. By the way, the suit fits, too — Obama’s a very tall man, and that’s what a well-fitting suit looks like on a tall man sitting in a low chair.
Dennis called him on the hoax. After a few rounds of weak defense, and then moral waffling of significant proportion, the hoaxer deleted the comments from his blog. Dennis preserved the conversation at TMB.
Moral of the story: Don’t believe much of what you hear or see, without corroboration. If a claim casts aspersions on someone, and comes on the internet, check it out before granting credence. Thanks to Dennis, an honest guy, for exposing the hoax and preserving the record of it.
Hoaxers are malicious and will do almost anything to damage Obama, even if it requires bringing down the U.S. and burning the flag. No wonder George Washington wanted out of this sort of politics.
Question: What’s the deal with the clock in the doctored photo? [Oh – it says “3:00 o’clock”]
Honor roll: Bloggers and others who exposed the hoax:
(W) We apologize for posting two hours ago an un-verified quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. He is the most quotable notable in history, he is ALSO one of the most fraudulently quoted…
In the 32 months of editing this page, we were corrected a few more times. I am including those for your reference:”The best part of the internet is you can make sh– up and people will believe it.” ~Benjamin Franklin
“An internet rumour is more to feared than a thousand bayonets.”
~Napoleon Bonaparte
“I pwned those n00bs.” ~FDR, 1934
“lol wtf” ~Barack Obama, 1981
The power of the Web and Being Liberal community is in a JOINT knowledge. We have learned that all errors are VERY quickly crowd-verified. THANK YOU Dear Liberals!
Watch: Someone will take one or more of these quotes as accurate.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
2012 is an election year, a time when we make history together as a nation. Potential turning points in history often get tarred with false interpretations of history to sway an election, or worse, a completely false recounting of history. Especially in campaigns, we need to beware false claims of history, lest we be like the ignorants George Santayana warned about, doomed to repeat errors of history they do not know or understand. How to tell that a purported piece of history is bogus? This is mostly a repeat of a post that first appeared at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub six years ago.
Robert Park provides a short e-mail newsletter every Friday, covering news in the world of physics. It’s called “What’s New.” Park makes an art of smoking out bogus science and frauds people try to perpetrate in the name of science, or for money. He wrote an opinion column for the Chronicle of Higher Education [now from Quack Watch; CHE put it behind a paywall] published January 31, 2003, in which he listed the “7 warning signs of bogus science.”
And it got me thinking about whether there are similar warning signs for bogus history? Are there clues that a biography of Howard Hughes is false that should pop out at any disinterested observer? Are there clues that the claimed quote from James Madison saying the U.S. government is founded on the Ten Commandments is pure buncombe? Should Oliver Stone have been able to to more readily separate fact from fantasy about the Kennedy assassination (assuming he wasn’t just going for the dramatic elements)? Can we generalize for such hoaxes, to inoculate ourselves and our history texts against error?
Perhaps some of the detection methods Park suggests would work for history. He wrote his opinion piece after the Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in which the Court laid out some rules lower courts should use to smoke out and eliminate false science. As Park described it, “The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.” The Court said lower courts must act as gatekeepers against science buncombe — a difficult task for some judges who, in their training as attorneys, often spent little time studying science.
Some of the Daubert reasoning surfaced in another case recently, the opinion in Pennsylvania district federal court in which Federal District Judge John Jones struck down a school board’s order that intelligent design be introduced to high school biology students, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
Can we generalize to history, too? I’m going to try, below the fold.
Here are Park’s seven warning signs, boiled down:
Park wrote:
Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?
I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate. [I have cut out the explanations. — E.D.]
The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
The discoverer has worked in isolation.
The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.
Voodoo history
Here, with thanks to Robert Park, is what I propose for the warning signs for bogus history, for voodoo history:
The author pitches the claim directly to the media or to organizations of non-historians, sometimes for pay.
The author says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. Bogus history relies more on invective than investigation; anyone with an opposing view is an “idiot,” or evil.
The sources that verify the new interpretation of history are obscure, or unavailable; if they involve a famous person, the sources are not those usually relied on by historians.
Evidence for the history is anecdotal.
The author says a belief is credible because it has endured for some time, or because many people believe it to be true.
The author has worked in isolation, and fails to incorporate or explain other, mainstream versions of the history of the incident, and especially the author fails to explain why they are in error.
The author must propose a new interpretation of history to explain an observation.
Any history account that shows one or more of those warning signs should be viewed skeptically.
In another post, I’ll flesh out the reasoning behind why they are warning signs.
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Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
. . . but perhaps won’t. I swear it seems as if someone has a concession at Tea Party functions selling self-lobotomy kits, and they’re selling like $10 iPhones.
File this in the “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad” department, with loss of sense of humor as a key symptom.
You may have seen this ad during the Super Bowl, and though you may have cringed a bit at the way it tweaks people who show concerns about the environment and who urge cleaning up pollution, you probably found it pretty humorous.
So some hoaxster with the apt handle The Rat at Club the Constitution Constitution Club dug up a dull, run-of-the-mill document out of the Department of Homeland Security that talks about DHS policies on working to implement the government’s environmental justice policies. “Environmental justice” is shorthand for “don’t dump garbage or toxic pollution in or close to the homes of poor people just because they are unlikely to have lawyers at the moment.”
Then The Rat flew off the handle, a truly head-exploding, insane Gish-Gallop rant about Homeland Security:
In its just-released Environmental Justice Strategy document, the DHS says the idea is to “include environmental justice practices in our larger mission efforts involving federal law enforcement and emergency response activities” and to incorporate environmental justice in “securing the homeland.” Roll that around in your head for awhile:
“Federal law enforcement” agents conducting “emergency response activities” in the name of “environmental justice” for the purpose of “securing the homeland.” The Green Police. Oh. My. God.
You couldn’t make up craziness like this guy, The Rat, could you? He clearly has no clue about the history of environmental justice (and is Google-challenged on top of that) — or he’s venally working to make people believe falsehoods. What’s the harm in including “environmental justice practices in our larger mission?”
Does this Rat, who appears to be a complete idiot, fail to understand that “emergency response activities” are commonplace, and occur whenever an 18-wheeler carrying a load of chemicals turns over on the freeway? Does The Rat fail to understand that spills need to be cleaned up? (Real rats are very clean creatures, actually. While they live in filthy, they do not prefer it, and they keep their dens very clean. This is one way a real rat, say Rattus Norvegicus, or Rattus rattus, is superior to this faux rat.)
As reported by Audi
HERNDON, Va.,– Green Police, the Audi Super Bowl ad, provides an uncommon avenue for green advocates, anteaters, Styrofoam, the legendary rock band Cheap Trick and the 2010 Green Car of the Year to find their inner connectivity.
How all of these rather disparate elements come together hasn’t been revealed yet by Audi. But in the end they will provide an entertaining look at how we all face a dizzying array of choices that can impact the environment. Some of these choices are easier than others. But, the Green Police ad will show, one of the best choices is driving the Audi A3 TDI, which won the prestigious 2010 Green Car of the Year award presented by Green Car Journal at the Los Angeles Auto Show in December.
The Audi Green Police ad will air Super Bowl Sunday in the fourth quarter of the largest television event of the year. But Super Bowl ad followers, Audi aficionados and others can get sneak peeks at what’s coming.
Audi released a teaser edit of the Green Police Super Bowl ad today, which highlights the crucial role anteaters can play in keeping the planet green. Think Styrofoam. One Super Bowl reviewer online is already betting the Audi Green Police ad will win top honors for “Best Use of an Unusual Animal in a Super Bowl Ad.” Audi disclaimer: No anteaters were harmed in the filming of the Green Police Super Bowl ad. To find that teaser video, go to www.facebook.com/audi.
Another preview of the Audi Green Police ad is the available download of the theme song of the spot. The legendary rock group Cheap Trick returned to the recording studio to remake their smash hit “Dream Police” into “Green Police.” Fans also can find that download by going to the Audi Facebook page.
For Audi, the Super Bowl has been a premium platform for promoting the performance and prestige of its cars the past three years. But underlying the fun of this year’s Green Police Super Bowl ad is a serious message: If 30% of Americans drove clean diesel cars like the Audi A3 TDI, the nation could reduce oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels a day. What’s more, clean diesel engines reduce CO2 emissions by 30%.
“Those are real-world benefits that the A3 TDI offers for today’s concerns about fuel consumption and greenhouse gas,” said Scott Keogh, Audi of America Chief Marketing Officer. “Super Bowl ads are all about fun, but the best ads point consumers to products that enrich their lives. That’s what we’ve done with the Green Police.”
Got that? It’s a straight up, funny-as-anything Super Bowl ad pushing Audi’s TDI Diesel engined cars.
Have the right-wingers genuinely lost their humor senses? Are they so shallow in their reading they didn’t catch the humor? Can’t they tell a joke from reality?
In contrast, environmental justice is, by now, a rather well-established movement to marry civil rights laws and anti-pollution laws to prevent poor neighborhoods from being unfairly burdened by pollution, in a drive to clean up pollution for the benefit of all. It’s an old enough concept that it goes by its initials, EJ. See Wikipedia’s quick and concise entry:
Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation [sic]. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.[5]
To avoid, minimize, or mitigate disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects, including social and economic effects, on minority populations and low-income populations.
To ensure the full and fair participation by all potentially affected communities in the transportation decision-making process.
To prevent the denial of, reduction in, or significant delay in the receipt of benefits by minority and low-income populations.[6]
Could a serious-minded American citizen disagree with anything in those two definitions? That’s right out of the Boy Scout Manual, it’s Leave No Trace writ large — it’s been the policy of the U.S. government since the early 1970s, proposed by Republicans as a means to conserve our nation’s lands, waters, and other resources.
There is nothing in the DHS environmental justice policy statement to suggest the agency will do anything more than worry about whether the agency itself is environmentally friendly, and fair to minority populations in the dumping of its wastes.Actually, there is nothing in the document opposed to pollution — only statements outlining that every group in the agency is responsible for following policy. The document says, in too many words, that no one can use the excuse, “It was the custodian’s job to see the used fluorescent light tubes were disposed properly.”
That crazy right wing! They just get more and more distanced from reality the closer the election looms!
Links to the post at Club the Constitution Constitution Club, with the implied allegation that Obama will be sending cops out to fine you and your local gendarmerie for using Styrofoam cups, make up a new Anti-Green Wall of Shame, made by unthinking people spouting off about what they do not know:
The Mind, It Boggles, Short Little Rebel (Who complains at the next blog, “This was a strategy that Hitler bragged about it.” Hitler worried about dumping pollution on poor people? Bullfeathers; the woman knows nothing about the topic.)
The Mind, It Boggles, Western Rifle Shooters Association (Do you sense an astonishing echo chamber effect here, with no thought at all to what words are actually echoed?) (Note the discussion of shootingfederalagents in comments; they must think no one is watching, or cares.) (Ooh. Also see this astonishing claim by Mike, in comments: “Marx and Engels discussed using environmentalism to destroy the capitalist west.” Pretty good, since environmentalism didn’t exist before either Marx or Engels died; nor did they talk abut “destroying” the west, especially since “the west” didn’t become parlance for capitalism until after 1946; Marx died in 1883, Engels in 1895.)
More than a dozen blogs, operated by at least a dozen bloggers — all of whom conserved a great deal of energy by failing to use any of their gray matter neurons before parroting a hoax. Oy. (My experience is that most of those blogs are terrified that someone will leave an opposing opinion in comments — if you successfully post a comment at any of those blogs, will you let us know in comments? The Ghost of Stalin stalks heavily among the blogs of the unthinking right.)
How many people will be suckered by this hoax? More than a dozen so far, and counting.
Update, May 3: A few wags at the original site now claim it’s parody, that they know it’s not so. Alas, they don’t post that, and as you can see by the update above, other anti-American Clean Air types continue to pile on, not hesitating to attack our national government for fun.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Moyers has better historic video than I could find; Moyers is right on this issue. Rep. Allen West owes all Americans an apology for his rash and wrong remarks.
Bill Moyers Essay: The Ghost of McCarthyism
April 26, 2012
In this broadcast essay, Bill connects the disgraceful McCarthyism of the past to its modern resurgence in the comments of Rep. Allen West and others. Haven’t we learned this lesson already?
I get e-mail from Bob Park, the physicist curmudgeon/philosopher at the University of Maryland (I’ve added links):
Robert L. Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“DEADLY CHOICES”: PAUL OFFIT EXPOSES THE ANTI-VACCINE MOVEMENT.
There was never a time before people knew that falling trees and large animals with teeth can kill. Microbes are another matter. They had been killing us for perhaps 200,000 years before Antonie van Leeuwenhoek showed them to us. Paul Offit and two colleagues worked for 25 years to develop a vaccine for the rotavirus, a cause of gastroenteritis that kills as many as 600,000 children a year worldwide, mostly in underdeveloped countries. The vaccine is credited with saving hundreds of lives a day. Offit wrote “Autism’s False Prophets” in 2008 exposing British physician Andrew Wakefield for falsely claiming the MMR vaccineis linked to autism.
H. Fred Clark and Paul Offit, the inventors of RotaTeq. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Vaccination prevents more suffering than any other branch of medicine, but is still opposed by the scientifically ignorant who accept the upside-down logic of the alternative medicine movement. Because vaccination of schoolchildren against virulent childhood infections is ubiquitous, crackpots, scoundrels and gullible reporters get away with linking it to unrelated health problems as they did in the 1980s with the ubiquitous power lines. We still hear echoes of the power-line scare in the cell phone/cancer panic. Paul Offit has just written “Deadly Choices: How The Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.” We need to do everything we can to stop it.
You don’t subscribe to Bob Park’s “What’s New?” You should.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author’s and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
—
Archives of What’s New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What’s New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link: http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1
You’ll be smarter for reading his little missilesmissives missiles.
You could write it off to pareidolia, once. Like faces in clouds, some people claimed to see a link. The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, coincided with Lenin’s birthday. There was no link — Earth Day was scheduled for a spring Wednesday. Now, years later, with almost-annual repeats of the claim from the braying right wing, it’s just a cruel hoax.
No, there’s no link between Earth Day and the birthday of V. I. Lenin:
One surefire way to tell an Earth Day post is done by an Earth Day denialist: They’ll note that the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was an anniversary of the birth of Lenin.
Coincidentally, yes, Lenin was born on April 22 (new style calendar; it was April 10 on the calendar when he was born — but that’s a digression for another day).
It’s a hoax. There is no meaning to the first Earth Day’s falling on Lenin’s birthday — Lenin was not prescient enough to plan his birthday to fall in the middle of Earth Week, a hundred years before Earth Week was even planned.
My guess is that only a few really wacko conservatives know that April 22 is Lenin’s birthday (was it ever celebrated in the Soviet Union?). No one else bothers to think about it, or say anything about it, nor especially, to celebrate it.
Inventor of Earth Day teach-ins, former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson
Senator Nelson chose the date in order to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an “environmental teach-in.” He determined the week of April 19–25 was the best bet; it did not fall during exams or spring breaks, did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events—so he chose Wednesday, April 22.
After President Kennedy’s [conservation] tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called “teach-ins,” had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me – why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?
I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air – and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.
Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:
“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….”
Nelson, a veteran of the U.S. armed services (Okinawa campaign), flag-waving ex-governor of Wisconsin (Sen. Joe McCarthy’s home state, but also the home of Aldo Leopold and birthplace of John Muir), was working to raise America’s consciousness and conscience about environmental issues.
About.com, “Is Earth Day a communist plot?”; “U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, the guy who dreamed up the nationwide teach-in that became Earth Day, once tried to put the whole “Earth Day as communist plot” idea into perspective.”On any given day, a lot of both good and bad people were born,” Nelson said. “A person many consider the world’s first environmentalist, Saint Francis of Assisi, was born on April 22. So was Queen Isabella. More importantly, so was my Aunt Tillie.”
Do you know why Earth Day is April 22? (gds44.wordpress.com) [This blog appears not to accept any dissenting views . . . funny, Leninist tactics from a guy who claims not to like Lenin.]
Rich Kozlovich at Paradigms and Demographic; Kozlovich repeats these fantastic lies, without even bothering to hint at any backup: “There is one factor that is known. This whole green stuff was imposed in Nazi Germany and in Soviet Russia and their views are virtually identical to the views of modern greenies and it is a reasonable assumption to think they were inspirational to the green movement of today; who have morphed into the step child of socialism. I think it is fair to question any denials on their part, in that their denials can be being likened to cow flatulence. Back to today.” [Editor’s note: Complete and utter balderdash.]
Wall of Lenin’s Birthday Propaganda Shame from 2010:
David Zeimer, writing in The Wisconsin Law Journal (This guy is particularly nutty. He notes the successes of cleaning up the air and water in and around Milwaukee, and then claims that clean air and water are false goals. Nuts.)
One of the ways you know Earth Day is innocently timed is that the FBI investigated it; in 1970, the FBI investigated hippies, but not organized crime. Go figure.
Don Surber may be as nutty as Zeimer, above — he notes words of concern from 1970, then dismisses the progress that resulted because people worked to change things; clean air is bad, to him, I guess
It even offers a page and a line — page 114, line 22. But that page has nothing to do with what the caption on the truck says. Congress, the President and their families, are not exempt from the Affordable Care Act. The Grassley Amendment expressly puts them in the plan, though they would have been left with their employer-provided plans without that special inclusion clause.
17 ‘‘(b) LIMITATIONS ON USE OF DATA.—Nothing in this
18 section shall be construed to permit the use of information
19 collected under this section in a manner that would ad
20 versely affect any individual.
21 ‘‘(c) PROTECTION OF DATA.—The Secretary shall en
22 sure (through the promulgation of regulations or otherwise)
23 that all data collected pursuant to subsection (a) are—
24 ‘‘(1) used and disclosed in a manner that meets
25 the HIPAA* privacy and security law (as defined in
[continuing to page 115]
1 section 3009(a)(2) of the Public Health Service Act),
2 including any privacy or security standard adopted
3 under section 3004 of such Act; and
4 ‘‘(2) protected from all inappropriate internal
5 use by any entity that collects, stores, or receives the
6 data, including use of such data in determinations of
7 eligibility (or continued eligibility) in health plans,
8 and from other inappropriate uses, as defined by the
9 Secretary.
That GPO version of the bill is searchable in .pdf form — searching for “Congress” I find no reference to any part that exempts Congress. Searching for “exemption,” I find no mention of any exemption from any provision that applies to Congress or the President.
So, what are the anti-ObamaCare fanatics really concerned about? Is there language in the bill that exempts either Congress or the President, from any provision?
Some guy is so obsessed with hatred for President Obama and health care reform that he paints the offending part on his truck. But he gets the law wrong.
Nothing in the Affordable Care Act exempts Congress, nor the President, from its terms.
So, here’s the real deal –As things currently stand, Members of Congress and their staff, until 2014, will continue to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). This program, considered among the best in the nation, allows federal employees- including Members of Congress and their staff- to choose from a wide range of health plans and select the one that best suits their needs. Note that the current plan is neither ‘government’ insurance, ‘free’ insurance nor any other sort of sweet deal that the public has been led to believe is the case. The federal employee’s program involves private insurance policies with premiums, deductibles, co-pays, etc.
Here’s the surprise – come 2014, when the lion’s share of the ACA provisions come on line, Members of Congress and their staff will be required to buy their health insurance on an exchange. In fact, their choices will be even more limited than our own. While it is expected that some 24 million people will elect to purchase their health care policy on a state run exchange, we are not required by law to do so. Members of Congress and their staff, however, must buy their insurance in this way.
There you have it. That guy, whoever he is, had his truck painted erroneously. We hope he doesn’t have a close relationship with the tattoo parlor.
_____________
So many hoaxes relating to Barack Obama; do you think there’s a shop somewhere with a dozen people sitting around dreaming up these hoaxes? What else explains the sheer number of Obama-related hoaxes?
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 