I didn’t know the Associated Press shares its “This Day in History” feature on YouTube in video form.
Is there a really good way to use ‘today in history’ features in the classroom?
June 17 in history: Watergate and Bunker Hill
June 17, 2010
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America's founding, American Revolution, Education, Famous Battles, History, Journalism, Scandals, Watergate scandal | Tagged: America's founding, American Revolution, Battle of Bunker Hill, Education, History, Journalism, Scandals, Shot heard 'round the World, Watergate | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Washington Times felled by DDT poisoning
June 9, 2010Washington Times‘ owner, the Unification Church, put the paper up for sale earlier this year — tired of losing north of $30 million a year on the thing. It appears that, in a cost-cutting move, the paper has laid off all its fact checkers and most of its editors.
And anyone with a brain.
DDT use in the U.S. peaked in 1959, with 70 million pounds of the stuff used in that year. This ad for a French product containing DDT comes from about that time.
How do we know?
Our old friend Stephen Milloy complains about Time Magazine’s “50 Worst Inventions” list, including, especially the listing of DDT, as discussed earlier. It’s wrong, and silly. Good fact checkers, and good editors, wouldn’t let such claptrap make it into print.
Milloy packed an astounding number of whoppers in a short paragraph about DDT:
From 1943 through its banning by the EPA in 1972, DDT saved hundreds of millions of lives all over the world from a variety of vector-borne diseases. Even when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator (and closeted environmental activist) William D. Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972, he did so despite a finding from an EPA administrative law judge who, after seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony, ruled that DDT presented no threat of harm to humans or wildlife. Today, a million children die every year from malaria. DDT could safely make a tremendous dent in that toll.
Let us count the errors and falsehoods:
1. DDT was used against typhus from 1943 through about 1946, and against bedbugs; it saved millions, but not hundreds of millions. Death tolls from typhus rarely rose over a million a year, if it ever did. Bedbugs don’t kill, they just itch. If we add in malaria after 1946, in a few years we push to four million deaths total from insect-borne diseases — but of course, that’s with DDT being used. If we charitably claim DDT saved four million lives a year between 1943 and 1972, we get a total of 117 million lives saved. But we know that figure is inflated a lot.
Sure, DDT helped stop some disease epidemics. But it didn’t save “hundreds of millions of lives” in 29 years of use. The National Academy of Sciences, in a book noting that DDT should be banned because its dangers far outweigh its long-term benefits, goofed and said DDT had saved 500 million lives from malaria, and said DDT is one of the most beneficial chemicals ever devised by humans. 500 million is the annual infection rate from malaria, with a high of nearly four million deaths, but in most years under a million deaths. Malaria kills about one of every 500 people infected in a year. That’s far too many deaths, but it’s not as many lives saved as Milloy claims.
NAS grossly overstated the benefits of DDT, and still called for it to be banned.
The question is, why is Milloy grossly inflating his figures? Isn’t it good enough for DDT to be recognized as one of the most beneficial substances ever devised?
My father always warned that when advertisers start inflating their claims, they are trying to hide something nasty.
2. Ruckelshaus didn’t ban DDT on his own — nor was he a “closeted” environmentalist. He got the job at EPA because he was an outstanding lawyer and administrator, with deep understanding of environmental issues — his environmentalism was one of his chief qualifications for the job. (Maybe Milloy spent the ’70s in a closet, and assumes everyone else did, too?) But EPA acted only when ordered to act by two different federal courts (Judge David Bazelon ordered an end to all use of DDT at one of the trials). At trial, DDT had been found to be inherently dangerous and uncontrollable. Both courts were ready to order DDT banned completely, but stayed those orders pending EPA’s regulatory hearings and action.
In fact, regulatory actions against DDT began in the 1950s; by 1970, scientific evidence was overwhelming (and it has not be contradicted:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal agency with responsibility of regulating pesticides before the formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, began regulatory actions in the late 1950s and 1960s to prohibit many of DDT’s uses because of mounting evidence of the pesticide’s declining benefits and environmental and toxicological effects. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962 stimulated widespread public concern over the dangers of improper pesticide use and the need for better pesticide controls.
In 1972, EPA issued a cancellation order for DDT based on adverse environmental effects of its use, such as those to wildlife, as well as DDT’s potential human health risks. Since then, studies have continued, and a causal relationship between DDT exposure and reproductive effects is suspected. Today, DDT is classified as a probable human carcinogen by U.S. and international authorities. This classification is based on animal studies in which some animals developed liver tumors.
DDT is known to be very persistent in the environment, will accumulate in fatty tissues, and can travel long distances in the upper atmosphere. Since the use of DDT was discontinued in the United States, its concentration in the environment and animals has decreased, but because of its persistence, residues of concern from historical use still remain.
3. Judge Sweeney ruled that DDT is dangerous to humans and especially wildlife, but that DDT’s new, Rachel-Carson-friendly label would probably protect human health and the environment. EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney presided at the hearings in 1971. As in the two previous federal court trials, DDT advocates had ample opportunity to make their case. 32 companies and agencies defended the use of DDT in the proceeding. Just prior to the hearings, DDT manufacturers announced plans to relabel DDT for use only in small amounts, against disease, or in emergencies, and not in broadcast spraying ever. This proved significant later.
Judge Sweeney did not find that DDT is harmless. Quite to the contrary, Sweeney wrote in the findings of the hearing:
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.
DDT use in the U.S. had dropped from a 1959 high of 79 million pounds, to just 12 million pounds by 1972. Hazards from DDT use prompted federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and Department of Interior to severely restrict or stop use of the stuff prior to 1963. Seeing the writing on the wall, manufacturers tried to keep DDT on the market by labeling it very restrictively. That would allow people to buy it legally, and then use it illegally, but such misuse can almost never be prosecuted.
Sweeney wrote that, under the new, very restrictive label, DDT could be kept on the market. Ruckelshaus ruled that EPA had a duty to protect the environment even from abusive, off-label use, and issued a ban on all agricultural use.
4. More DDT today won’t significantly reduce malaria’s death toll. Milloy fails to mention that DDT use against malaria was slowed dramatically in the mid-1960s — seven years before the U.S. banned spraying cotton with it — because mosquitoes had become resistant and immune to DDT. DDT use was not stopped because of the U.S. ban on spraying crops; DDT use was reduced because it didn’t work.
Milloy also ignores the fact that DDT is being used today. Not all populations of mosquitoes developed immunity, yet. DDT has a place in a carefully-managed program of “integrated vector management,” involving rotating several pesticides to ensure mosquitoes don’t evolve immunity, and spraying small amounts of the pesticide on the walls of houses where it is most effective, and ensuring that DDT especially does not get outdoors.
To the extent DDT can be used effectively, it is being used. More DDT can only cause environmental harm, and perhaps harm to human health.
Most significantly, Milloy grossly overstates the effectiveness of DDT. Deaths from malaria numbered nearly 3 million a year in the late 1950s; by the middle 1960s, the death rate hovered near 2 million per year. Today, annual death rates are under a million — less than half the death rate when DDT use was at its peak. Were DDT the panacea Milloy claims, shouldn’t the death numbers go the other way?
Milloy gets away making wild, misleading and inaccurate claims when editors don’t bother to read his stuff, and they don’t bother to ask “does this make sense?” Nothing Milloy claims could be confirmed with a search of PubMed, the most easily accessible, authoritative data base of serious science journals dealing with health.
Obviously, Washington Times didn’t bother to check. Were all the fact checkers let go?
Even more lunatic
Milloy also attacked the decision to get lead out of gasoline. Ignoring all the facts and the astoundingly long history of severe health effects from lead pollution, Milloy dropped this stinking mental turd:
As to leaded gasoline, we can safely say that leaded gasoline helped provide America and the world with unprecedented freedom and fueled tremendous prosperity. We don’t use leaded gasoline in the United States anymore, but more because people simply don’t like the idea of leaded gasoline as opposed to any body of science showing that it caused anybody any harm. It’s the dose that makes the poison, and there never was enough lead in the ambient environment to threaten health.
The U.S. found that getting lead out of gasoline actually improved our national IQ. Lead’s health effects were so pervasive, there was an almost-immediate improvement in health for the entire nation, especially children, when lead was removed. Denying the harms of tetraethyl lead in gasoline goes past junk science, to outright falsehood.
What is Milloy’s fascination with presenting deadly poisons as “harmless?” Why does he hate children so?
Why do publications not catch these hallucination-like errors and junk science promotions when he writes them?
Antidote to DDT poisoning in humans: Spread the facts:
4 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, DDT, Disease, Environmental protection, History, Journalism, Junk science, Newspapers, Public health, Rampant stupidity, Regulation, Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Africa, DDT, Disease, Environmental protection, EPA, Journalism, Junk science, Malaria, Newspapers, Rampant stupidity, Regulation, Science, Washington Times | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Maybe, 4th grader disproves much warming in Beeville, not entire planet?
June 7, 2010Hmmm. News from Beeville is tough to come by when limited to calls that tend to catch school officials before they get to their office or after they go home (early, by most standards — but it’s summer, so we cut ’em some slack).
Again from the Beeville Bee-Picayune, about five months ago:
Conclusion: ‘pretty creative’
by Scott Reese Willey
As world leaders meet in Copenhagen to draft legislation to rein in the release of greenhouse gases and stem climate change, an R.A. Hall Elementary School student is questioning the science supporting global warming.Caption from Beeville Bee-Picayune: A.C. Jones High School student Zachary Johnson, above, looks over a science experiment entered in R.A. Hall’s annual science fair. Zachary and other members of the high school’s science club judged the exhibits. Photo from, and read more at: mySouTex.com - Conclusion ‘pretty creative’
“There is not enough evidence to prove global warming is occurring,” fourth-grader Julisa Raquel Castillo concluded in a science project she entered in the campus’ annual science fair on Tuesday.
Julisa studied temperatures in Beeville for the past 109 years to develop her conclusion.
She researched online data basis of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, the National Weather Service, and checked out books on climate change at the Joe Barnhart Bee County Library.
Her findings:
• temperatures rose and fell from 1900 to 1950.
• temperatures in Beeville cooled down over a 20-year period beginning in 1955 and ending in 1975.
• Since 2001, temperatures in Beeville have grown cooler year after year.
Close to 200 R.A. Hall students entered projects in this year’s science fair, said organizer Denise Salvagno, who also teaches the school’s gifted and talented students.
Fourth- and fifth-graders were required to enter projects as part of class work; however, students in grades first, second and third could enter projects if they desired.
Students in Ben Barris’ science club at A.C. Jones High School judged the projects.
“Some of these projects are pretty creative,” said Zachary Johnson, a senior at A.C. Jones and one of the judges. “You can tell a lot of the students put a lot of effort into their projects. Some of them didn’t put much effort into it but a lot of them did and, overall, I’m impressed with what I am seeing.”
Fourth-grader Kaleb Maguire proved that all tap water in Beeville was the same quality.
He took samples of water at 10 different sites across town and came to the conclusion that because the water originated at the same source — the city’s fresh water plant — the samples contained the same amount of alkalinity, pH and free chlorine.
Fourth-grader Amber Martinez concluded that worms subjected to music were more alert than those not.
And fourth-grader Sam Waters’ project was no doubt much enjoyed by his pet pooch, Lucky.
Sam wanted to know which meat his dog would like more. Turns out Lucky preferred chicken over both hotdogs and sausage.
Fifth-grader Savannah Gonzales found out that ants prefer cheese over sugar, but classmate Misty Nienhouse concluded that ants preferred sugar over cheese. Tessa Giannini’s science project also seemed to prove that ants preferred sugar over cheese, bread or anything else.
However, fourth-grader Faith Hernandez conducted a similar experiment and concluded ants preferred cheese over ham.
Yet, Jose Vivesos, a fourth-grader, concluded that ants prefer sugar water over anything else.
Nathanial Martinez, also a fourth-grader, built a working seismograph and demonstrated how it detected and recorded earthquakes.
Fifth-grader Jamison Hunter decided to see if money in the hand made a difference in someone’s heart rate.
He recorded the heart rate of each volunteer without money in their hand, with one dollar bill in their hand, two one dollar bills in their hand and three one dollar bills in their hand.
His conclusion: “From this experiment, I learned that everyone’s heart rate is different by how much money they hold,” he said. “No two people had the same results even with the test being done the same way.”
Read more: mySouTex.com – Conclusion ‘pretty creative’
Temperatures may have cooled in Beeville. Can we extrapolate Beeville to the entire planet?
The title of the project may be a little bit ambitious.
[See earlier post on the issue here.]
More:
- From the same on-line news source: “GREAT SCIENCE FAIR – 82 Skidmore-Tynan students enter projects in annual competition”
- American Spectator gets overexcited, and shows why American Spectator is not regarded as authoritative on any science issue
- Mind of Dan stumbles across the facts on the Castillo project, then wanders away
- Climate Depot offers between-the-lines evidence of plan to change name to Climate Information Dumpster
- Hyperventilating, junk science sites think 4th grade science trumps everything else (This is a clear demonstration that the “balanced education” program is dumbing-down science taken to an extreme — these yahoos can’t distinguish between a 4th-grade science fair project’s over-ambitious title and real science, anywhere.)
7 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Environmental protection, Hoaxes, How do we know what we know, Journalism, Newspapers, Science, Texas | Tagged: Accuracy, Climate change, Environmental protection, Hoaxes, How do we know what we know, Journalism, Newspapers, Science, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Beeville fourth grader disproves global warming?
June 7, 2010John Mashey alerted me to this news story from the online Beeville Bee-Picayune via mySouTex.com:
R.A. Hall fourth-grader is science national champion
Caption from mySouTex: R.A. Hall fourth-grader Julisa Castillo (center) is the 2010 national junior division champion for the National Science Fair. Her project, “Disproving Global Warming,” beat more than 50,000 other projects from students all over the nation. She is pictured with her father, J.R. Castillo (left), and R.A. Hall Principal Martina Villarreal. Read more: mySouTex.com - R A Hall fourth grader is science national champion
R.A. Hall Elementary School fourth-grader Julisa Castillo has been named junior division champion for the 2010 National Science Fair.
Her project, “Disproving Global Warming,” beat more than 50,000 other projects submitted by students from all over the U.S.
Julisa originally entered her project in her school science fair before sending it to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to be judged at the national level.
The NSF panel of judges included former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, 14 recipients of the President’s National Medal of Science, and four former astronauts.
“Before she sent it off, she just had to add more details, citations for her research, and the amount of hours she spent working on it,” said Julisa’s father, J.R. Castillo.
In addition to a plaque, trophy and medal, Julisa has won an all-expenses-paid trip to Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., which she plans to attend this summer.
Read more: mySouTex.com – R A Hall fourth grader is science national champion
The blog of the North County Times (California) has doubts. There are signs of hoax. While the Beeville Independent School District does have an R. A. Hall elementary, the list of winners of last December’s science fair does not include Ms. Castillo. To go from not placing at the local school to winning the national would be quite a feat!
I suspect an error somewhere, perhaps in the title of the project, or in the understanding of what the title implies.
Most of the obvious hoax signs check out against a hoax: Beeville exists (improbably Texan as the name may be), R. A. Hall is an elementary school in Beeville ISD. The principal of R. A. Hall is Martina Villareal. Beeville has a guy named J. R. Castillo (listed as Julisa’s father in the photo caption), and his photos at the site promoting his music shows photos of a guy who looks a lot like the guy in the photo here. Most hoaxers wouldn’t go so far for accuracy on details.
Fun little mystery. I have made inquiries with the newspaper, and hope to follow up with the school. Stay tuned. There may be a great little science project somewhere in here.
_____________
See update here: Quick summary, big title, project not quite filling those shoes. I’ve made inquiries at the paper and school district without answers; there’s more to the story, but not much. A good project with a misleading title, for those who would be misled by a 4th grade science fair project.
19 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Education, Global warming, Hoaxes, How do we know what we know, Journalism, Newspapers, Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Beeville, Climate change, Global warming, hoax, How do we know what we know, Journalism, Newspapers, Science, Science Fair, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Newseum’s interactive map of today’s headlines
June 2, 2010This is cool.
Pam Harlow, an old friend from American Airlines, and a map and travel buff, e-mailed me with a link to the Newseum’s interactive headline map. I can’t get a good screen shot to show you — so you gotta go to their site and see it for yourself.
When it comes up in your browser, it features a map of the continental 48 states, with dots marking major daily newspapers across the nation. Put your pointer on any of those dots and you see the front page of the newspaper for today from that city.
Using the buttons at the top of the map, you can check newspapers on every continent except Antarctica.
How can I use this in class?
Update: Here’s a screen shot of the Newseum feature:
Newseum’s interactive front-page feature – on December 15, 2013
2 Comments | Geography - Economic, Geography - Political, Globalization, Internet, Journalism, Maps, Museums, Newspapers, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Travel, World history | Tagged: Classroom technology, geography, Globalization, Internet, Journalism, Maps, Museums, Newseum, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dan Valentine – He makes me laugh
May 26, 2010By Dan Valentine
My dad was a big man. Six-two, some two-hundred-and-thirty pounds. He was two-eighty or so at one time.
Once, he went on a public diet, along with other hefty local celebs–a radio deejay or two; a politician or three; John Mooney, the Trib’s sports’ columnist. I think Herman Franks, manager of the old Salt Lake Bees and former New York Giant catcher was one. All wanted to thin down. They called themselves the “Blubber Brigade”. Once a week my dad would report to the reading public their weekly success or failure.
When my mom first fell in love with my dad, friends would say, “But he’s fat.” My mom would answer, “But he makes me laugh.”
HE MAKES ME LAUGH
(c) 2010 by Daniel ValentineThere are men of worldly means,
Earthly goods, and riches,
Who’d have set me up in suites,
Each with household staff.But my love I chose because
He keeps me in stitches.
He is not a man of wealth,
But HE MAKES ME LAUGH.There are men of world renown,
Household names with money,
Who’d have handed me blank checks
With their autograph.But my love I chose because
He’s bust-a-gut funny.
He is not a man of fame,
But HE MAKES ME LAUGH.Friends wonder why
I’m no taken with the guy.
He’s not much to look at.
Not by half.
Some would even say he’s fat
And ask themselves, “What’s with that?”
Well, HE MAKES ME LAUGH.There are notables I know
Who are sitting pretty.
Each of whom I said no to.
All must think me daff’.But my love I chose because
He’s side-splitting witty.
He is far from well-to-do,
But HE MAKES ME LAUGH–
My, how that man can make me laugh!–
And he thinks I’m funny too.YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME
(c) 2010 by Daniel ValentineIf you can make a woman laugh
In this world of ours gone daff’,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.If you can roll her in the aisle,
Turn concern into a smile,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.Sure, you’d love to wine-and-dine ‘er,
Buy her clothes by some designer,
Send her flowers, bring her candy.
All of which is fine and dandy.
But you’re broke! Not to choke.
Make her laugh. Tell a joke.If you can make her slap her knee,
Grab her sides, go tee-hee-hee,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.If you can bring tears to her eyes,
Make her laugh until she cries,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.So you’ve none of earthly riches–
Pal, just keep your gal in stitches.
You don’t need a lotta money.
All you gotta be is funny.
Never mind that you’re broke.
Make her laugh. Tell a joke.If you can make her spill her beer
While she’s grinning ear-to-ear,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.If you can make her roll about,
On the verge of passing out,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.Fill her heart and home with laughter,
Head to toe, floorboard to rafter.
Let the others buy her toddies,
Spend their dough as though their Saudis.
So you’re broke! Not to choke.
Perfect time for a joke.If you can make her stamp her feet,
‘Fraid ‘a falling off her seat,
My friend,
YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME.No need to buy a long-stemmed rose.
No box of chocks, no card with poem.
Just make her snort milk from her nose.
Make her laugh
And YOU’RE HALFWAY HOME
To happily-ever-af’.
2 Comments | Dan Valentine, Family, Journalism, Utah | Tagged: Dan Valentine, Family, Journalism, Salt Lake Tribune, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dan Valentine – Zehr gut!
May 22, 2010By Dan Valentine
I checked my e-mail this morning. There was a message from my bestest friend, regarding a piece I had written. Two words. “Zehr gut!” Her dad was German, died when she was three. She has one remaining photo of him.
“Zehr gut”. I had to Google it. Wikipedia: “Germany has a 6-point grading scale to evaluate the performance of school children.”
“Zehr gut!” “Best possible grade!”
Thanks, Professor. I needed that.
We communicate by e-mail. My cell minutes ran out months ago. Back in mid-December, in fact.
A “good” friend of mine in Salt Lake used up much of them.
When I was in Nashville, he’d call on a regular basis. Usually from a bar. We’d been friends for quite some time. Going on 30 years. Ever since I first took over my dad’s column.
He’d call and ask, “How are you doing?” Then he’d shout (to whomever was in the bar.) “It’s Dan Valentine Jr. Got him on the phone.” As if anybody in the bar knew who in hell Dan Valentine Jr. was. Or cared. It had been some thirty years since my last column.
I’d say, “I’m homeless. In Nashville. I need a place to stay. Till I get on my feet. Can you take me in?”
When I had the column, and afterward, when I was living in D.C. and New York, I was welcome to stay at his place whenever I was in town. Once, I got in a cab at the airport, gave my friend’s address, and the cabby said, “Oh, you’re going to Valentine’s place.” Funny.
When you’re famous/rich, friends “want” you to stay with them. Oscar Levant, the great musician/wit/brains behind “An American in Paris,” sold his home and stayed with different friends the rest of his later life. Christopher (“The Sound of Music”) Plummer sold his home long ago and just stays the night/week with assorted friend. It helps to be famous/rich.
But, anyway, my friend would call. I’d tell him I was homeless. I need a place to stay. (He’s the proprietor of a very successful shop downtown.) It was Christmastime. He’d say, “This is our busy season.” Then, “We’ve got our house up for sale.” Oh, if he was calling from the shop: “Here, talk to the wife. But don’t tell her your homeless. It would upset her.”
Wouldn’t want to do that!!!
One night he calls while I’m tramping through sleet and snow. “How are you doing!”
“I’m doing fine, blah, blah. I’m going to make it here in Nashville if it kills me, blah, blah, blah.”
I soon came to the realization, it could very well kill me.
He calls another day. I plead with him to take me in. He’d been drinking. He’s a happy fellow when he drinks. Aren’t we all! He says, “Sure. I’ll tell the wife.”
I call him the next day to make arrangements. He’s sober. “It’s our busy season,” he says. “We’ll going to Vegas at the end of the month,” he says. “But,” he says. “Sure,” he says. “Uh,” he says. “You’re welcome to stay with us. You can get a job somewhere.”
Needless to say, I didn’t go there. Had a change of heart. Thanks but no thanks. He used up my last minutes leaving messages on my cell. Going, going, gone.
But just before they ran out, with just one or three minutes remaining, I got a call from my bestest friend. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Why haven’t you been answering the phone?” Then: “Come home. I bought a house. With a pool.” (She swims.)
Nicer words I’ve never heard. Except for maybe the two words: “Zehr gut!”
Leave a Comment » | Dan Valentine, History, Homelessness, Journalism | Tagged: Dan Valentine, Friends, Homeless, Journalism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dan Valentine – Back to Nashville
May 20, 2010By Dan Valentine
Back to Nashville and my first night homeless. I’ve got four hours to kill until the doors of Operation Stand Down open.
Lots of time on my hands. What to do? I pace up and down. I stomp my feet. It’s cold. I mean, COLD! My clothes are sopping wet from the sleet and the cop-escorted stroll. The wind is blowing. I watch an empty beer can chase a skittering Big Mac wrapper across the empty parking lot. A lone bird flies by in the night. The cop car cruises by, oh, so slowly ever so often. Just checking. I pace up and down. I stomp my feet. I curse under my breath. Sheeeesch! Fcccccccck! Criss’almighty! I’m chilled to the bone.
I think about my beloved bestest friend in the entire universe.
She’d been homeless!! In New York. Rode the subway nights. When I met her, in D.C., she was staying with a friend from Florida. They’d attended the University of Florida together. She had no hair! Shaved bald as a billiard ball, as they say. Punk as they get. Tough cookie! But beautiful!
In New York, she got by working “shit jobs”. Her words. One was dressing up as a clown and handing out brochures for some coming attraction. A soon-to-be circus in town. Can’t remember.
At one job, at closing, the manager, a male, said he’d give her a ride home. He drove to an isolated, abandoned strip mall, ill-lit, parked the car. Scary stuff. She took out a knife and started slashing the interior. Overhead, seats, door paneling. He fumbled his way out of the car and ran for his life. Very lucky guy! She’s a tough cookie. A patrol car finally came along and the officer gave her a ride home.
We hit it off from the beginning. I made her laugh. She made me smile.
She moved in with me. I had just bought a condominium in Alexandria, VA. One bedroom. I was working for Hatch. Over time, her hair grew. My dad would have loved her. She resembled Marilyn Monroe. Everyone thought so. Friends called her Norma Jean. In D.C., there’s a tall brick building with a huge mural of Marilyn painted on. We caught a cab once. The driver passed by it and pointed it out to her. “Look. Look. That’s you. That’s you.”
My mom met her a few years later at a Thai Restaurant. My friend ordered for us. My mom and I didn’t touch a bite. We had never had Thai food before. Now, I can’t live without it.
After meeting her, I asked my mom what she thought of her. She said, “She’s perfect!”
I said, “She’s the most beautiful woman in D.C.” And she was.
My mom agreed. “I studied her every feature,” but added, “She’s more than beautiful. She’s nice.”
And that she is. She gave me my moral compass. I didn’t have one before I met her. She opened my eyes. She gave me my love for dogs. I’m a vegetarian now (when I’m not desperately hungry). She gave me my present political and religious views. She believes if this is it–life, that is (and that could very well be!)–we have to help each other get through it.
She spends much of her time saving bugs from drowning in our pool.
We’ve seen much of the world together. After D.C., we moved to Tribeca in lower Manhattan. (The Twin Towers were only a stone’s throw away.) We’ve traveled together to Amsterdam (many times), Paris, Nice (where she sunbathed topless), Cologne, Monte Carlo.
Here in the U.S.: New Orleans, Minneapolis, Des Moines, the list goes on and on.
Once, we drove from Iowa City to Oxford, Ms., to New Orleans to Biloxi to Mobile to Tampa. In between, in the middle of the night, semi-lost and famished, we stopped at a little backwoods market, at the end of a dark swamp road in northern Florida. The place was run by two very old women. Scary-looking, a tooth or two missing. The walls were plastered with photos, magazine covers, newspaper clippings, and movie posters of Johnny Depp. We picked up a couple of sodas and sandwiches, something for the dogs (we had three then), and went to the register and one or the other said, very slowly: “Do. You. Like. Johnny. Depp?”
Both of us looked at each and we were both thinking the same thought: Gawd, are we in trouble! Wrong answer and we could end up at the bottom of the swamp. What to reply? We were thinking of the dogs. We didn’t want them to end up sandwich meat.
We told the truth. “We love Johnny Depp.” She smiled, pleased, and we went on our way.
We’ve separated from time to time, to do what one or the other has to do. She went back to school in Florida. Got her masters in philosophy. Got accepted to a top-ten university in the mid-west. Got her Ph.d. (Her thesis was picked up by a publisher and has since been translated into German.) She speaks Latin. She’s a member of Mensa. She wants to swim the English Channel. She swims daily four hours day, without stopping.
I could go on and on.
Looking back, the only truly good thing I did when I had lots of money was help her to get her degree, and then only a tiny bit.
Standing at the entrance way of Operation Stand Down, freezing, lonely as hell, scared half to death, shaking, I thought of my friend. And I wrote. Words to a tune in my head. A song.
Most or all lyrics by themselves without music read flat. But here goes anyway:
WARM ALONE
(c) 2009 by Daniel Valentine
When clouds, amassing, grumble and groan
And drench, in passing, the cobblestone–
Dripping head to toe,
And with blocks to go,
Thoughts of you as buckets fall
Warm body, heart, mind, soul, and all
With what I call
A WARM ALONE.
When winds, mos’ bitter, whistle and moan
And leaves and litter are tossed and blown–
Looking up to see
Birds on wire flee,
Thoughts of you as gales brawl
Warm body, heart, mind, soul, and all
With what I call
A WARM ALONE.
Whenever the weather is stormy,
Thoughts of you seem to warm me.
Tho’ it has been a while or so
Since I saw you last,
Thoughts of you bring a smile, a glow;
And the spell you cast–
Call it whatever you will–
Warms me as if it is still July
And you are here close nearby.
When lines are down, both power and phone,
With folk and town both chilled to the bone–
Huddled by a door
Of a vacant store,
Thoughts of you–snow, sleet, or squall–
Warm body, heart, mind, soul, and all
With what I call
A WARM ALONE.
A little before seven in the morning, veterans began appearing. An older gent in a wheelchair. Another with a limp. Young, old, and in between. All in great need of help. A counselor with a key opened the door. We all walked inside. Coffee!
Editor’s note: I’m running behind in getting Dan’s stuff moved from comments to posts. I’ll catch up soon. Read ’em where you find ’em.
Leave a Comment » | Dan Valentine, History, Homelessness, Journalism | Tagged: Dan Valentine, History, Homelessness, Journalism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dan Valentine – My Dad’s dream
May 17, 2010By Dan Valentine
My dad’s dream was to be a reporter. His dad was one, for the Detroit Free Press. He adored his dad. His mom? That’s another story. He loved her, but, well, she was a Roaring Twenties flapper. But I’ll leave that tale for another time.
After the war, my worked for AP/UPI or both in a couple of mid-western towns.
Lincoln, Neb., was one. Got room and board at a minister’s home. Wasn’t much to do in Lincoln back then. After work, he’d buy a pint of bourbon and polish it off alone in his room at night. One problem: What to do with the empties? Couldn’t put ‘em in the garbage. It was a minister’s home, for Christ’s sake! So he hid ‘em under the bed, in chest of drawers, etc.
God knows what the minister thought or did with ‘em after my dad left.
He got a job at the Rapid City Journal in South Dakota–my dad, not the minister. Met my mom. Married. I was born.
My mom’s dad was so taken with my dad’s writing that he offered to support him while he wrote the Great American Novel. But, oh no, my dad wanted to be a newspaperman like his “ol’ man.” He applied for a job at the Denver Post and The Salt Lake Tribune. Got offers from both. Took the Tribune job. Who knows why? He had spent a couple of days in Salt Lake after the war and had gone on his way, unimpressed.
The year was 1949, the month June. I was going on two.
He loved his job, so much so that on the side without pay he began writing a weekly humor column called “Nothing Serious.”
It was so popular he began writing it daily, for free, all the while reporting full-time.
All this time, Jack Paar is writing him letter after letter telling him to come to New York. He’s got an idea for a late-night show.
But, oh no, my dad had a love affair with the newspaper profession.
Cut to: flipping calendar pages. November, December, 1950, 1951 …
An older, experienced reporter, Chinese-American, forget his name, took my dad under his wing. Taught him the business. Once the two were at the Utah State Prison. Some function. Lunch was served. My dad would dip his fork to take a bit and my dad’s mentor would kick him under the table. My dad dipped his fork again. Another kick. He finally got the message. Later, his mentor said, “You don’t know what inmates have put in the food.”
Another time they were covering a story at the Hotel Utah. Governor J. Bracken Lee was there, other VIPs. A luncheon. A waitress came around with a pot of coffee and my dad picked up his cup, which was turned down on the table, to have some. His mentor kicked him under the table again. My dad put the cup back, upside down.
His mentor whispered in my dad’s ear that if you left your cup upside down, it signaled to the waitress that you preferred whiskey–liquor being a major no-no back then). And, damned, if the waitress didn’t make a second trip, after serving those who wanted coffee, with a pitcher of bourbon for those with other tastes.
Cut to: the week of July 26, 1953. My dad calls some law enforcement agency to check a fact for some minor story. Gets put on hold. Gets put back on line and finds himself on a conference call with local police and the feds. At dawn, Arizona state police officers and others were going to raid Short Creek, a settlement of some 400 Mormon fundamentalists. He listens to all the details. Goes to the city editor. Tells him. The city editor goes to the managing editor. Tells him. And the managing editor assigns a reporter to cover the story. Not my dad. Some other reporter!
From Wikipedia: Short Creek. July 26, 1953. The largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history. 263 children were taken into custody. Big, big story, nationally, internationally
The result: My dad never wrote another news story for the Trib. To hell with ‘em! He concentrated on the column.
Where am I going with this? Victor Buono and my dad and their friendship and this website, believe it not.
To be continued …
1 Comment | Dan Valentine, History, Journalism, Newspapers | Tagged: Dan Valentine, Journalism, Newspapers, Reporting | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dan Valentine – Salt Lake City
May 16, 2010By Dan Valentine
No tale of trial and tribulation today.
These past many years, I’ve been writing lyrics, a trunk full, concentrating on what they call “money” songs–holiday songs, city songs. One hit Christmas song and you can retire for life, or so they say; same goes for a hit New York or San Francisco song.
There are only a handful of Salt Lake songs. John Lange, the father of Hope Lange, the actress, wrote one: “I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City.” Johnny Mercer recorded it and made it a hit for a time. The Beach Boys had a hit with “Salt Lake City.” And that’s about it.
They say write what you know about. So, here goes. I wrote it pacing up and down Jamaica Beach, TX. I had the series “Big Love” in mind.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH!
(c) 2010 by Daniel Valentine
Salt Lake City! SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH!
As nice a town as any ever you saw …
Lovers zig-zag down the slopes and embrace.
I put my bag down and said, “This is the place!”
Salt lake City! SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH!
I found the sweetest angel ever you saw.
When I walked by ‘er, she smiled and I swear
Hymns from a choir singin’ filled the town square.
Lost my last buck
Shootin’ craps in Las Vegas.
Thought I’d run plumb outta luck,
But I rolled a seven
When I hitched a ride
To a suburb of heaven.
Salt Lake City! SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH!
Of all the happy fellas ever you saw,
Sisters and brothers, I’m lovin’ my life,
Tho’ unlike others I’ve got only one wife.
Lost my last buck
Shootin’ craps in Las Vegas.
Thought I’d run plump outta luck,
But I rolled a seven
When I hitched a ride
To a suburb of heaven.
Salt Lake City! SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH!
1 Comment | Dan Valentine, History, Journalism, Travel | Tagged: Dan Valentine, Homelessness, Journalism, Salt Lake City | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Wall Street Journal’s DDT-fueled war on science
May 12, 2010I don’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal — their discounts to educators are lousy.
So I missed this editorial when it ran on April 24, 2010 (page A12), “DDT and population control – malaria still kills one million every year.”
Nominally, that should be good news. At the peak of DDT use in the early 1960s, malaria killed about 3 million people annually. By the time we banned DDT use on cotton crops in the U.S., the death toll was still about 2 million people annually. From the heyday of DDT, we’ve decreased malaria’s death toll, to less than half what it was.
Editorial writers at the Journal don’t let facts get in their way when they go off on a misdirected political jihad or crusade. Gross error Number 1: They mislead readers about the facts.
They are claiming that a million is too many (it is), but they claim that the total would be significantly less if only Americans would attack Africa with poison. We have trouble enough with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems to me. There is no indication that we could reduce malaria rates with a lot of extra poison. Malaria is a parasite in human blood. To defeat the disease we have to defeat the infections in humans. Mosquitoes just spread the disease from one human to another. DDT does not cure malaria in humans; it is one preventive device of limited effectiveness.
What are they on about?
The Journal’s editorial writers said:
Environmental activists this week marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, which happened to fall three days before World Malaria Day. Insofar as Earth Day politics have contributed to today’s malaria epidemic, the two events are related.
You could see this one coming. The reactionaries at the editorial seek out opportunities to criticize environmentalists, whose cause they see as anti-business. The Journal’s editorial page usually carries an op-ed piece by Hoover Institute maven Henry I. Miller about once a year (see here, for example), claiming we need DDT to fight West Nile virus. We don’t, of course. West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes are best fought with other pesticides, when pesticides are used. They need to be hit before adulthood, while they are still larva, in the water. DDT is exactly wrong for such applications. But Miller’s piece comes around almost every year, as soon as the first West Nile virus infections in humans are noted.
So, since they so soundly disregard science on that diatribe, why not here, too? DDT offers a great target for Tea Baggers, Know-Nothings, and truth bashers. Most of the history of DDT was written before the internet, so it’s easier to spread falsehoods without contradiction.
Disinformation. Propaganda. Shame on the Wall Street Journal.
Earth Day and World Malaria Day are related in this way: Environmentalists warned us that doing the wrong stuff in the environment would make it harder to fight malaria, and they were right. People who resist clean air and clean water legislation also resist legislation to stop poisoning our planet. Those people rarely do anything to fight malaria, either. Human comfort, human health, human survival, is not what they are concerned about.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, was a leading opponent of the insecticide DDT, which remains the cheapest and most effective way to combat malarial mosquitoes.
Gaylord Nelson, the father of Earth Day, was governor of Wisconsin when the University of Wisconsin did the first studies showing that songbirds and raptors in Wisconsin were being wiped out by DDT. We should expect him to be an opponent of indiscriminate use of the stuff. His state was on the road to ruin, and long before the federal government acted against DDT, Wisconsin had laws and regulations to limit its use. Wisconsin’s wild populations recovered a bit more quickly because Wisconsin had acted.
Gaylord Nelson at the Apostle Islands, Photograph by Frank Wallick, 1967.
Nelson also knew that, in the U.S., malaria was conquered by 1939 (according to the Centers for Disease Control). DDT came along in 1946, seven years later. While DDT was used to control mosquitoes in the U.S., it was for no disease control reasons — that was why so many people opposed the rather pointless use of the stuff. And I suspect Nelson was savvy enough to know that DDT has not been the cheapest means of controlling mosquitoes for several years. One application of DDT in Africa costs about $12.00, for the professional who must apply it, and the testing to determine whether DDT will even work. One application lasts about six months. So, for a year’s protection, DDT costs about $24.00 per house, per year.
Bednets cost about $10.00, and last about five years. That works out to $2.00 year. For $24.00, you could provide a dozen different nets in a home, though most homes would use them only to protect children.
Moreover, recent test runs in Africa show DDT about 25% to 50% effective in reducing malaria incidence, while bednets are about 50% to 85% effective. Nets are cheaper and more effective.
Doesn’t the Wall Street Journal have fact checkers? Or do they just not care about the facts?
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” misleadingly linked pesticides to cancer and is generally credited with popularizing environmental awareness.
Wrong on three fronts. Carson noted that the family of chemicals from which DDT comes might have links to cancer, but she did not make the claim that DDT is carcinogenic. DDT was banned because it’s a long-term, deadly poison that destroys ecosystems. Cancer in humans was not a part of the equation.
However, DDT is now known to be a weak human carcinogen. Every cancer-fighting agency on Earth lists it as a “probable human carcinogen” (it is confirmed to cause cancer in other mammals). Can’t the Wall Street Journal find the phone number of the American Cancer Society?
DDT earned its ban because of 20 years of research data by 1972, showing that DDT kills virtually everything it comes in contact with that is smaller than a large man, and it destroys ecosystems. Talking about DDT’s carcinogenicity is a red herring. Carson didn’t claim DDT was a significant cause of cancer, nor was DDT banned from agricultural use because anyone thought it was a significant cause of cancer. Yes, DDT is a weak human carcinogen, contrary to the Journal’s implication; but no, that’s not why it was banned.
Carson’s book certainly ignited concerns about human activities affecting environment other than land development. But “environmental awareness” is as old as our nation, at least. A hundred years prior to Rachel Carson’s book, the U.S. set aside the world’s first National Park, Yellowstone. 60 years earlier, Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot led the drive to conserve the nation’s forests. The Soil Conservation Service, a New Deal program, worked to save soil on farms and unimproved areas, a good 30 years before Carson’s book. Environmental awareness is an almost-congenital trait in Americans. Rachel Carson sounded alarms about new reactive chemical combinations. Americans were already alert to the need to save soil, water, air and wild spaces.
We banned DDT to save our crops and to save our wildlife. Those are good reasons to keep the ban today.
But other leading greens of the period, including Nelson, biologist Paul Ehrlich and ecologist Garrett Hardin, were also animated by a belief that growth in human populations was harming the environment.
Nelson thought the U.S. needed to slow immigration (see more below). Ehrlich feared a massive round of starvation, which was staved off only with the Green Revolution and billions of dollars of foreign aid money, the good luck of our having Norman Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation, and major economic change in nation’s like India and China. Hardin pointed out that even the best intentioned people needed a structure to encourage them to conserve, else conservation would not take place.
They all recognized that while any human could minimize her impact on the natural world, no one person could ameliorate all the effects of billions of people.
“The same powerful forces which create the crisis of air pollution also are threatening our freshwater resources, our woods, our wildlife,” said Nelson. “These forces are the rapid increase in population, industrialization, urbanization and scientific technology.”
Notice, please, that Sen. Nelson did not suggest humans should do anything to cause or encourage massive human death (nor did the Journal do the courtesy of noting where they quoted him from). He merely notes that air pollution and water pollution, and a lack of freshwater, are created by human populations, industry, urban sprawl and technology. All of these things threaten human health. Nelson is concerned that we not add to human illness and misery. That’s not what the Journal’s editorial wants you to think, however. It will suggest instead that Nelson urged more human suffering and death.
How craven must an editorial board be to accuse good people, falsely, of such sins?
In his book “The Population Bomb,” Mr. Ehrlich criticized DDT for being too effective in reducing death rates and thus contributing to “overpopulation.”
I doubt it. I can’t find anything quite to that description in my copy of the book. It’s a common internet legend (one level dumber than urban legend) — but shouldn’t the Wall Street Journal have higher standards than to use for documentation, “my cousin Clem heard a story about a person his aunt once knew?”
Hardin opposed spraying pesticides in the Third World because “every life saved this year in a poor country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations.”
Now the Journal is making things up. In the essay from which the Journal quotes him, Hardin wrote about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration and population growth — almost sounding like an angry Arizona Tea Partier at times — but never did he get close to suggesting that we should not suppress malaria, for any reason. (Wise readers may wish to see what Hardin actually said, where he really went awry if he did, and how his words resonate today, at his essay, “Living on a Lifeboat.” Writers at the Journal should be ashamed of savaging the reputation of a guy who is so much in tune with what they usually write. Notice Hardin does not mention DDT, use of pesticides in foreign nations, malaria, nor any other disease. He rails at starvation, however.) When the Wall Street Journal engages in fiction, shouldn’t they let us know?
For these activists, malaria was nature’s way of controlling population growth, and DDT got in the way.
Gee, in context, that’s all fiction. Never did Sen. Gaylord Nelson claim malaria was a good population control tactic, nor that we should stop using DDT to allow more people to die. Those are whole cloth lies. Never did Garrett Hardin say either of those things. Never did Paul Ehrlich say those things.
Cover of 2003 Science Magazine special on Garrett Hardin’s essay, “Tragedy of the Commons”
For anti-science activists, like the writers at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, falsehoods have become coin of the realm, and DDT is just one more sciency thing to try to use as whip against political opponents. The serious question is, why is the Wall Street Journal opposed to clean air and clean water? Why are they trying to politicize things at all?
The writers at the Journal continue:
Today, malaria still claims about one million lives every year—mostly women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. There’s no evidence that spraying the chemical inside homes in the amounts needed to combat the disease harms humans, animals or the environment. Yet DDT remains severely underutilized in the fight against malaria because the intellectual descendants of Senator Nelson continue to hold sway at the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies.
Full disclosure would be good here. Malaria death rates are at the lowest point in history, at least since 1900. Yes, too many die — but it’s not the fault of “not enough DDT.” No nation that uses DDT has ever succeeded in eradicating malaria with pesticides alone. Only those nations that assaulted malaria from the human side, treating malaria in human victims, have been successful in eradicating the disease. DDT use was essentially suspended in Africa by the World Health Organization in about 1965, because overuse of DDT in agriculture had bred mosquitoes that are resistant and immune to the stuff. No amount of DDT spraying, anywhere, can reverse that. Spraying DDT where mosquitoes are unaffected by it, is stupid.
Plus, studies indicate a correlation between DDT use, even in those small amounts, and premature deaths to children in the households sprayed. DDT is not harmless. DDT is not benign.
DDT has never been banned in Africa, and even under the 2001 Persistent Organic Pesticides Treaty (POPs) DDT has a special carve out to keep it available to fight malaria, despite its being a destroyer of worlds. So implicit in the Journal’s screed here is that Africans are too stupid or lazy to use a substance that would save their children and themselves from malaria, though it’s available relatively cheaply.
Is DDT “underutilized?” Again we should ask, why would anyone use DDT where it is not effective? Then we should ask, who would use DDT in fighting disease in Africa, and do they use it? It turns out that DDT is not completely superfluous to all mosquito populations. But testing is required to be sure DDT will work — were an organization to use ineffective pesticides, thousands could die, and the testing is therefore a preservation of human life. And, because of past incidents in Africa, for example when DDT killed off the fish local populations depend on for their food, DDT use is extremely limited, to indoor applications only, and only by trained professionals who limit its spread.
WHO has been using DDT in Africa for indoor residual spraying (IRS) since the 1950s. Use was slowed when DDT’s effectiveness was compromised. In recent years WHO held a press conference on DDT to encourage locals who fear DDT poisoning to go along, and since 2005 DDT’s effectiveness appears to be dropping. But DDT is available for use wherever it is needed to fight malaria in Africa.
Is the Wall Street Journal calling for mass poisoning of Africa? What else could they be talking about? Why would they call for such a thing?
The Journal claims WHO and other UN agencies are “under the sway” of Sen. Nelson, and that’s bad? Let’s be clear: Nelson didn’t oppose use of DDT in Africa to fight malaria. UN’s WHO is the leading continent-wide advocate of proper use of DDT to fight malaria. If the Journal claims that current, appropriate use of DDT is too little, what is the Journal advocating?
The good news is that the Obama Administration has continued the Bush policy of supporting DDT spraying in Zambia, Mozambique and other countries where the locals want it used. “Groups like the Pesticide Action Network have lobbied the U.S. Agency for International Development to stop spraying DDT, and Obama is ignoring them so far,” says Richard Tren of Africa Fighting Malaria, an advocacy group. “They’re prioritizing what makes sense from a science and public health point of view.”
Let’s be clear: The Bush administration refused to allow U.S. money to be used to purchase DDT, or to use DDT, until about 2005. Environmental Defense, the organization that first sued to stop DDT use in the U.S., argued for years that DDT should be allowed in the limited use WHO proposed, but Bush’s people stood firmly opposed, though never explaining why. In any African nation where local people want DDT, it’s freely available with other money, of course. So U.S. opposition, bizarre as it was, was not and is not a barrier to DDT use.
Most environmental groups favor beating malaria, and if a bit of DDT carefully controlled will help do the trick, so much the better. While business lobbyists have falsely impugned environmentalists for years on this point, actual opposition to DDT use has come, in Uganda for example, from business groups. Tobacco growers claim they fear some DDT will somehow get on tobacco leaves, and that will make the stuff unsaleable in the European Union. Cotton growers fear any faint traces of DDT will ruin sales of organic cotton to the EU. These business groups sued to stop DDT use against malaria in Uganda.
But environmental organizations, like ED, the Sierra Club, and others, have been fighting malaria for 40 years.
Which is more than we can say for Richard Tren. Tren is one of two or three of the leading false propagandists for poisoning Africa in the world. He tells false tales about Rachel Carson, false tales about DDT’s harms and effectiveness, and as best I can tell he has never lifted one finger or written one check to fight malaria himself, while taking tens of thousands of dollars to spread his false tales.
There are dozens of noble malaria fighters out there whose opinions we should seek — Socrates Litsios, the late Fred Soper, to mention two. Why does the formerly august Wall Street Journal use Richard Tren as a source, when there are authoritative people handy to talk?
DDT helped to eradicate malaria in the U.S. and Europe after World War II, and the U.S. is right to take the lead in reforming public health insecticide policy and putting the lives of the world’s poor above green ideology.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12
According to the history of malaria at the CDC, malaria was essentially wiped out in the U.S. by 1939. DDT was not available for use for another seven years. Malaria was gone from northern Europe by World War II. DDT was a tool in the final eradication of the disease in Italy and Greece. But the main campaign against malaria was in curing the disease in humans, before the mosquito populations could rise up.
Among the nasty facts of science the Journal either does not know, or refuses to say, DDT can’t eradicate mosquitoes. In anti-malaria campaigns, DDT is used to knock down the mosquito populations temporarily, so that the disease can be cured in humans. Mosquito populations will quickly rise again, and in even greater numbers — but if there is no human reservoir of malaria parasites for mosquitoes to draw from, they cannot spread the disease. Malaria parasites must spend part of their life cycle in humans, and part in mosquitoes.
Curing malaria in humans is the tough part. It requires money to improve medical care, for accurate and speedy diagnoses, and for prompt and complete treatment of the disease in each patient. Preventing malaria is aided greatly by better-built homes with screens on windows, the sort of stuff that requires people to have more than subsistence incomes. So beating malaria generally requires economic development, too.
How much easier is it to bash environmentalists than to confront the real causes of malaria. Bashing environmentalists won’t do anything to relieve human suffering nor eliminate the disease, so we can bash environmentalists again next World Malaria Day, and next Earth Day — all at no cost to us, safe in our Wall Street Journal offices in Manhattan, New York, U.S.A. The Journal has fallen victim to bold purveyors of junk and voodoo science, and bogus and voodoo history. Shame on the Journal.
Curing the disease in humans means the mosquitoes are mere nuisances, and no longer vectors of disease. Killing the mosquitoes with poison means the disease will be back with a vengeance in a few weeks or months. Curing humans is more difficult, and more costly — but it saves lives and can save Africa. We cannot poison Africa to health.
It’s curious, though: How did they get so poisoned by DDT, up in that office building?
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1 Comment | Africa, DDT, Disease, Environmental protection, History, Journalism, Junk science, Malaria, medicine, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Disease, Environmental protection, Garrett Hardin, Gaylord Nelson, Journalism, Malaria, Paul Ehrlich, Richard Tren, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, Wall Street Journal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dan Valentine – Homelessness
May 11, 2010By Dan Valentine
Everywhere in America now you’ll see homeless pushing shopping carts filled with their last remaining possessions.
Yesterday I saw a disheveled-looking older gentleman, straggly-hair and all, right out of one’s worst nightmare, pushing a wheel barrel down a very busy highway here in Ensenada, two large black plastic bags filled with his remaining stuff.
Very, very sad.
He would push it, rest for a moment, then push it some more, going somewhere/nowhere with it.
Humans! We’re collectors.
When my friend and I sold our home in Texas, and I went off to Austin to start anew, we had a garage sale. Paintings, furniture, knickknacks, etc.
On a table in the driveway, we laid out trinkets. I had a large bag of refrigerator magnets from almost every place I’ve ever been. Vietnam, Scotland, New York, Philadelphia, South Dakota, Denver, St. Louis, New Orleans, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Capri, Berlin, D.C., Geneva, Amsterdam, London, Glasgow, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Japan, Guam, Micronesia, Belize, Cuba (twice), Charleston, Seattle, Las Vegas, etc. One time my friend and I were in Kansas City. I had her drive me across the border to get an Arkansas magnet. It really irked her. To this day I hear about it.
Well, anyway, an older woman purchased them all for $5 and came by the next day to say how much pleasure she had had that night. She had laid them all out on her living room carpet and simply looked at them, and it gave her great joy.
Where is this going? When I left for Austin, I had to put all my personal effects in storage. Some 60 boxes.
(When we bought the house in Friendswood, the movers came with my stuff–it had been in storage in Salt Lake–and my friend didn’t talk to me for three days.
In Nashville and Austin, I was paying $64 a month for storage. When I became broke, my friend picked up the tab for a while. Ron, at the Music City Hostel in Nashville, picked up one month for me, tho’ he looked at me bewildered as if to say: Why are you hanging on to it? You’re old, broke, homeless, your life is over.
Anyway, when my friend bought a place, and I returned to Houston, we got my stuff out of storage.
Two weeks ago–two days before I was to leave again–she said her I had to do something with my boxes or her parents, who were moving in, would.
What to do? Get a grocery cart? A wheel barrow?
The boxes were filled with files. My dad’s letters to me when I was in Vietnam, my mom’s letters to me, photos, all my by-lines, hundreds of thousands of words I had written and had been honing for decades. Plays, songs, screenplays, musicals, my dad’s unfinished shorts stories, poems, etc. Everything I treasured. Every piece of writing I had been working on and polishing for years. I went through each file in each box the first day, thinking to my self, “Well, I can’t throw that away. I can’t throw that away. I can’t throw that away.”
Next day, with no time remaining, I had to toss it all. Three car trips to the dumpster down the road.
Earlier that week I had to sell all my books. One signed by Richard Nixon, a hundred or so first edition books of musical plays. One I had paid $65 for. At Half-Price Books, I got $85 for ‘em all. There’s not a big market for bound musical plays in Texas!
After tossing everything, my friend said: Don’t you feel like a gigantic weight has been lifted off your shoulders?” Noooooo! But she knows how I feel. As I kid, she moved a lot and she was forced to give up everything through the years as a result. She has a few cherished photos from her childhood, and that’s it!
I’m slowly getting over my grief of losing everything, tho’ in the middle of the night, I’ll wake up and go, “Oh, no! I threw that away? Oh, my god, I tossed that?”
People lose everything all the time. In fires, earthquakes, in wars. You move on. I guess.
I have a small travel bag. I have my laptop. Hopefully, some of the printed stuff I tossed is on my computer. I’m afraid to look.
2 Comments | History, Homelessness, Journalism | Tagged: Dan Valentine, Homelessness, Journalism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Constitutional drama, under our noses, off the radar
May 2, 2010What about that impeachment trial, eh? Planning to watch it?
Your best bet might be C-SPAN, but I wouldn’t wager the mortgage were I you.
Impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in the U.S. Senate, 1868; from Harper's Weekly, April 11, 1868 - public domain
Federal Judge Thomas Porteous of New Orleans got four articles of impeachment approved against him by the U.S. House of Representatives on March 10. The first article got a nearly unanimous vote — who says the House is divided? — 412 to 0. Three other articles got similar margins, 410-0, 416-0, and 423-0.
Unless you live in New Orleans or have a strange fascination for that great newspaper, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, you probably heard nothing about this great Constitutional drama. If you get the Times-Picayune, you’ve had good coverage of the issue so far.
Under its own special rules of impeachment, the Senate appointed a committee led by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, which will hold the actual trial and report results to the full Senate for action. Sen. McCaskill said she expects the trial to begin in early August, and that the report to the full Senate could come as soon as September.
While news media and bloggers chase ghosts and hoaxes, real work continues in Washington, D.C. You just don’t hear much about it.
You likely have not heard of Judge Proteous’s troubles, though they are long-standing, because the issue was a local, Louisiana and New Orleans affair. Heaven knows New Orleans has had its share of other stories to knock off the front pages the ethical lapses of a sitting federal judge who was once a promising attorney.
Should you have heard? How can we judge? Should we not be concerned when a relatively important story is not only bumped to the back pages of newspapers, but bumped completely out of them, and off the radar of people who need to be informed about how well our government works?
My alert to this story came through a back-door route. On the list-serv for AP Government, someone asked who presides at the impeachment trial of the Chief Justice — remember, the Constitution spells out that the Chief Justice is the presiding officer in the impeachment of the President or Vice President. My memory is that the Senate rules on impeachments, and there is a committee that effectively presides, and that the impeachment of a Vice President or President merits special attention because the Vice President is the official, Constitutionally-mentioned presiding officer. We can’t have the vice president presiding at the trial of himself or herself, nor of the president. Looking up impeachment procedures, I stumbled across the pending impeachment of Judge Porteous. I don’t think it has appeared in our local newspaper, The Dallas Morning News.
Other judges have been impeached. Here in Texas, within the past three years, we had a federal judge impeached, Samuel Kent. You’d think Texas media would be sensitive to such stories. (Kent resigned before the trial could begin.)
I perceive that media are ignoring several important areas of federal governing, not necessarily intentionally, but instead by being distracted by nonentity stories or stories that just don’t deserve the inflated coverage they get. Among undercovered areas are the environment, energy research, higher education, foreign aid, management of public lands and justice, including indictments, trials and convictions. A vast gray hole where should be the news of Judge Porteous’s pending impeachment is just one symptom.
Several news outlets carried stories:
- Deseret News in Salt Lake City, carried the AP story by Larry Margasak (AP also has the best, most recent photos of Porteous, but I’m not an AP subscriber)
- CNN story on House impeachment of Porteous
- Wall Street Journal law blog mentioned the impeachment vote, and linked to another WSJ article on the issue
More:
2 Comments | History, Journalism, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, News, Newspapers, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Senate | Tagged: Government, History, Impeachment, Journalism, Judge Thomas Porteous, Louisiana, New Orleans, News, Politics, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Senate | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Typographical error, a gift to creationists
March 31, 2010Here’s a post at Ecographica about a typographical error in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the newspaper of the University of Arizona.
How long before some creationist seizes on it to claim Darwin’s theories are dead? 5 . . 4 . . 3 . . 2 . . .
If you find it, will you note it in comments, please?
(Notice how the only stuff creationists can make hay out of, is error?)
- Original story in Daily Wildcat (who deserve thanks for covering the story at all)
- The original paper, on the Laetoli footprints (3.6 million years old), from the Public Library of Science (PLOS); “Laetoli Footprints Preserve Earliest Direct Evidence of Human-Like Bipedal Biomechanics,” by David A. Raichlen, Adam D. Gordon, William E. H. Harcourt-Smith, Adam D. Foster, and Wm. Randall Haas, Jr.; abstract:
Background
Debates over the evolution of hominin bipedalism, a defining human characteristic, revolve around whether early bipeds walked more like humans, with energetically efficient extended hind limbs, or more like apes with flexed hind limbs. The 3.6 million year old hominin footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania represent the earliest direct evidence of hominin bipedalism. Determining the kinematics of Laetoli hominins will allow us to understand whether selection acted to decrease energy costs of bipedalism by 3.6 Ma.
Methodology/Principal Findings
Using an experimental design, we show that the Laetoli hominins walked with weight transfer most similar to the economical extended limb bipedalism of humans. Humans walked through a sand trackway using both extended limb bipedalism, and more flexed limb bipedalism. Footprint morphology from extended limb trials matches weight distribution patterns found in the Laetoli footprints.
Conclusions
These results provide us with the earliest direct evidence of kinematically human-like bipedalism currently known, and show that extended limb bipedalism evolved long before the appearance of the genus Homo. Since extended-limb bipedalism is more energetically economical than ape-like bipedalism, energy expenditure was likely an important selection pressure on hominin bipeds by 3.6 Ma.
Update: Wall of Shame
Here are creationists claiming the findings rebut, refute or befuddle Darwin:
Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, Humor, Journalism, Research, Science | Tagged: Arizona Daily Wildcat, Evolution, human evolution, Journalism, Laetoli Footprints, Oops, Research, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Science bloggers doing it wrong?
March 10, 2010A new paper in the Journal of Science Communication offers a critique of the workings and effectiveness of science bloggers.
Happily for us, the paper is open access, freely available.
The article appears to be from some research for a Ph.D.:
Inna Kouper is a doctoral candidate in the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University
Bloomington. Her current research interests lie broadly in the areas of language and information; the role
of science in society; and the evolution of information and communication technologies generally
described as social or participatory media (such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.).
Several bloggers say the paper gets wrong what science bloggers do, and what they should do.
Perhaps — you can read the paper yourself and compare it with the criticism.
I do want to call your attention to a very good feature of the paper. It analyzes postings on 11 of the top science blogs in the world.
1 Pure Pedantry scienceblogs.com/purepedantry
2 Synthesis http://www.synthesis.cc
3 MicrobiologyBytes http://www.microbiologybytes.com/blog
4 Wired Science http://www.wired.com/wiredscienc
5 BioEthics blog.bioethics.net
6 DrugMonkey scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey
7 Scientific Activist scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist
8 Pharyngula scienceblogs.com/pharyngula
9 Panda’s Thumb http://www.pandasthumb.org
10 ScienceBlog scienceblog.com
11 Cosmic Variance blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance
How can you tell the paper’s serious? The 11 blogs analyzed do not include any of the junk science blogs, like Uncommon Descent or Watt’s Up With That?
If you listen carefully, you can hear Bill Dembski and Anthony Watts stewing.
3 Comments | History, Journalism, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: Accuracy, blogs, Journalism, Science, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 