October 4, 2008
Banned Books Week flies by way too fast. So many banned books, so little time.
Was it appropriate for Sarah Palin’s only debate with Joe Biden to come in Banned Books Week? Or, was it fate?
Liam Sullivan at Panorama of the Mountains had a great idea, running a list of good blog posts on banned books, “Banned Books Week 2008” — I’ll try to encourage readership at his blog by not repeating any of his listings here. That will make this little impromptu carnival shorter by a lot, and challenging to me to compose.
Let’s start with some of the big dog blogs.
Boing-Boing featured the great window display from the Twin Hickory Public Library in Glen Allen, Virginia:
Window display at the Twin Hickory Public Library in Glen Allen, Virginia, for Banned Books Week. via Boing Boing
A display showing live humans reading may become even more rare over the next few years, as the No Child Left Behind Act begins to affect Americans.
Jesus’s General noted the same display, but with a banner that shows the necessarily political character of standing up for books and knowledge in an era that tries to discount education as “elitism,” and smart and educated people as “elitists,” as if “elite” didn’t mean “the best.” Which brings up a sore point with me: How have the book banners been so successful in stamping out dictionaries? Dictionaries are great books to promote freedom — but just try to find a good one in most homes, or in school classrooms. My father and mother kept a dictionary on their desk at the store they owned; a good dictionary used to be a great high school graduation gift for a student off to college. When was the last time you saw such a thing used as such a gift? I digress.
Banned Books Week banner found at Jesus' General
Jesus’ General said:
Books can be dangerous. Many contain ideas. Sometimes unpopular ideas. Ideas that may make one think. Ideas that engage and transform us. Ideas that set off our imaginations. Ideas that can change the way we see the world. Ideas that may make decide to help change the world for the better. Clearly books can be subversive. And we can’t have that! An informed and imaginative people could do incredible things.
Paper Cuts, a book blog at the New York Times site, asks “What are you doing for Banned Books Week?” it features a nice photograph of the public library in Wasilla, Alaska. Barry Gewen offers great insights into Banned Books Week.
One of the most informative of these lists is “Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course, Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century” — because it provides background on various censorship efforts over the years. It’s also the most amusing list, though it’s hard to laugh after your jaw has dropped.
George Orwell’s “1984” was challenged in Jackson County, Fla., because it was considered “pro-Communist.” Who would have imagined that the Wichita, Kans., public library would, ayatollah-like, challenge Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” for being “blasphemous to the prophet Mohammed”? In 1973, “Slaughterhouse Five” was actually burned in Drake, N.D. And Lindale, Tex., banned “To Kill a Mockingbird” from a school reading list in 1996 because it “conflicted with the values of the community” — leading one to wonder just what Lindale’s values are, and why anyone would want to live there.
Farm School, in honor of Banned Books Week, does a bang up job of nailing down the facts on the charge that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tried to ban books, when she was mayor of Wasilla (not exactly, but the details — truth is in the details).
Abby the Librarian carries another rundown of posts about Banned Books Week, including one from Mommy Madness that notes that banning books takes away a parental responsibility, giving it to the government. (Did you catch that, Joe Leavell?)
Everybody’s Libraries carries an explanation of “Why Banned Books Week matters.”
I’m Here, I’m Queer – What the Hell Do I Read? notices an uncomfortable trend, that several of the most-challenged books are challenged because they discuss homosexuality in non-condemning terms.
Cover of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, via Maia's Blog - Just Add Coffee
Maia’s Blog – Just Add Coffee discusses Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the irony of banning a book about banning books, in “Banned Books Week, Day 6.” As you might imagine, this is the sixth in a series of posts. The other books covered are Brideshead Revisited, Ivanhoe, Sons and Lovers, The Phantom Tollbooth (challenges coming, I presume, from the Taliban, al Quaeda, and Dick Cheney), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish gives Phillip Pullman, the author of The Golden Compass, a vent about religious objections to books.
Another roundup of Banned Books Week posts, at Books Worth Reading.
Chez Namastenancy rounds up even more, and points especially to a quiz about banned books at the venerable on-line site of the venerable British newspaper, The Guardian. (English teachers: Can you say “bellringer?”)
Notes from Evil Bender discusses the importance of keeping ideas on the shelves of libraries, especially those ideas that some find “offensive” to “family values.”
School Library Media Activities Monthly carries this simple quote:
“Banning books is so utterly hopeless and futile. Ideas don’t die because a book is forbidden reading.”- Gretchen Knief, librarian, protesting a proposed 1939 ban against The Grapes of Wrath
Which posts about Banned Books Week sang out to you, that I’ve missed noting here? Comments are open — please share.
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Books, Censorship, Civil Rights, Education, Free press, Freedom - Political, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, Libraries, Politics | Tagged: Banned Books Week, Books, Education, First Amendment, Freedom of the Press, knowledge, Libraries, literacy, Politics, reading | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
October 3, 2008
October 2008 — Uganda is nearing the end of the season when the national health service sprays DDT inside homes to discourage mosquitoes from biting, and spreading malaria. Results from DDT use this year show no improvement over the previous year, and in some cases malaria rates are higher.
BBC map of Uganda, showing Apac Province. Apac is victim to terrorism by the “Lord’s Resistance Army” and other armed bandits, as well as being the most malaria-ridden area of the world.
The story from The Observer in Kampala, via All-Africa.com news, provides some of the details, but little analysis to be debated. Is the failure of the program due to partial implementation, since implementation was resisted by businesses and cotton farmers? Or is DDT simply ineffective? It’s nearly impossible to tell from data available so far.
Below the fold, the story in its entirety.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
October 2, 2008
Senate conservatives, probably hoping to derail the bill, posted the full text of the “bailout” bill today. It’s a grand gesture. The bill has turned into a real Congressional “Christmas Tree” bill, with some little bauble to meet the needs of everyone. I think it was Marketplace that noted earlier today it even includes a provision killing the excise tax on arrows of a particular kind, a tax that probably should have been killed a long, long time ago.
I’m sure you can find something to complain about, and much to be happy about. The text is posted in .pdf form, so you can search it for specific words.
You might search for “executive compensation,” for example, and find starting on page 102 that Congress has stripped out the tax exemption for high executive salaries and other compensation over $500,000 annually, for executives in “troubled” companies. In short, Congress has cut the pay of executives at the companies who will be saved from bankruptcy by this bill. That could not have happened any other way.
Wankers who wail about how business in Congress is conducted, those same wankers who claim they can clean up Washington merely by stopping “earmarks,” will fume. With luck, perhaps, those wankers who also happen to be Members of Congress will vote against this bill despite their constituents’ needs being met directly by it. With more luck, their opponents in the election will figure that out and make a campaign issue. With just a little bit more luck, some of these wankers will lose their seats.
Better they lose their seats than America loses its ass. (Apologies if your sensitive eyes were offended.)
Real public servants — “politicians” in the spat-out views of crabby people — had their way with the bill that President Bush was too lazy to make workable. (I don’t blame Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson — he’s a wheeler dealer, a man who probably understands the markets, but not a politician who can make Congress go. It’s not really all his fault the other bill didn’t pass.) The real politicians loaded this bill with actions that should have been taken months or years ago. These actions had no chance in the current Congress, with Republicans holding a large enough minority to stop legislation simply by refusing to work on it, and willing to do so in the hopes they could claim it was the Democrats’ fault.
America will not be crucified on a cross of Republican intransigence. There’s a goody for everybody. Everybody should take their goody and rejoice in it.
I hope Americans can figure out who to thank, and will thank them.
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Leave a Comment » | Economics, Free market economics, Law, Politics, U.S. Senate | Tagged: Bailout, Congress, Earmarks, Legislation, Politics, Senate | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
October 1, 2008
As we ponder how to keep freedom in America in the middle of Banned Books Week, I worry about the dangers of vigilantes acting to effect a ban on a particular book, despite official actions.
How to fight these anti-reading, anti-American vigilantes? People in Lewiston, Maine, came up with the fantastic idea of simply buying more books.
Vigilantes sometimes check out the books they want to ban, and then simply don’t bring the book back to the library. If there’s no book on the shelf to be checked out, they reason, no one else can check it out. One such vigilante in Lewiston, an activist in favor of homophobia it appears, refused even a court order to return the book she wanted to ban, Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal.
Cover of Robie Harris's children's health book, It's Perfectly Normal
Jail time for the vigilante? Oh, the law would allow that. But instead, freedom fighters purchased four more copies of the book for the library.
Voting with ideas. What a concept!
Full text of the American Library Association press release, below the fold.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
September 28, 2008
The Millard Fillmore soap-on-a-rope* started spinning in the shower this morning. I knew some mischief was afoot.
Sure enough, as soon as we turned the gas on to the computer and the screen warmed up, what should pop up but a group claiming to be opposed to junk science and arrogant ignorance, but arrogantly spreading the ignorance of junk science: Climate Change Fraud, “The Crichtonian Green.”
I caught the site with a news reader that looks for idiocy about DDT. This is the line the automoton caught:
“DDT is not a carcinogen…the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people…”
We’ve washed out the dirt from Crichton’s claims before in the Bathtub, in “Michael Crichton hysterical for DDT.” Go read his errors there (there’s a YouTube video of his assaulting innocent school children with his hysteric errors, too, in case you think I’m joking).
Among the anti-science crowds, this stuff is holy writ. Dogma insists that scientists are craven political creatures driven to silly programs that waste money and hurt poor people. Never mind the facts. They believe it religiously — and they treat efforts to educate them as assaults on their faith.
DDT is a well-established carcinogen in animals, including mammals, and every cancer-fighting agency on Earth lists DDT as a probable human carcinogen. The various “bans” on DDT all allow DDT to be used to protect poor people against disease, but DDT’s overuse by its advocates led to rapid evolution of resistance and immunity in insects targeted by DDT — DDT use was stopped when it stopped being effective. Inaction on the part of DDT advocates, and their unwillingness to use other methods to fight malaria, have been culprits in the too-slow program to reduce malaria among poor people. Spraying DDT advocates with DDT will do absolutely nothing to get them off their butts to act.
(Go to the search feature on this blog, search for “DDT.” The truth is out there.)
Oy. This is how the week starts?
__________
* No, I never did get a Millard Fillmore soap-on-a-rope; but it makes a good gambit to open a post, don’t you think?
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8 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Climate change, DDT, Global warming, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Climate change, DDT, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 27, 2008
In the first of the 2008 debates between presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain pointed to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s two letters, written on the eve of the D-Day invasion in June 1944. One letter would be released. The first letter, the “Orders of the Day,” commended the troops for their work in the impending invasion, giving full credit for the hoped-for success of the operation to the men and women who would make it work.
The second letter was to be used if the invasion failed. In it, Eisenhower commended the troops for their valiant efforts, but said that the failure had been in the planning — it was all Eisenhower’s fault. (It was not a letter of resignation.)
You can find the first letter, the one that was released, through links at this post at the Bathtub, “Quote of the Moment: Eisenhower at D-Day Eve.”
The second letter, you’ll find in image and text with links to other sources at this Bathtub post, “Quote of the Moment: Eisenhower, duty and accountability.” Last year I wrote:
In a few short sentences, Eisenhower commended the courage and commitment of the troops who, he wrote, had done all they could. The invasion was a chance, a good chance based on the best intelligence the Allies had, Eisenhower wrote. But it had failed.
The failure, Eisenhower wrote, was not the fault of the troops, but was entirely Eisenhower’s.
He didn’t blame the weather, though he could have. He didn’t blame fatigue of the troops, though they were tired, some simply from drilling, many from war. He didn’t blame the superior field position of the Germans, though the Germans clearly had the upper hand. He didn’t blame the almost-bizarre attempts to use technology that look almost clownish in retrospect — the gliders that carried troops behind the lines, the flotation devices that were supposed to float tanks to the beaches to provide cover for the troops (but which failed, drowning the tank crews and leaving the foot soldiers on their own).
There may have been a plan B, but in the event of failure, Eisenhower was prepared to establish who was accountable, whose head should roll if anyone’s should.
Eisenhower took full responsibility.
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troop, the air [force] and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.
Who in the U.S. command would write such a thing today?
It was a case of the Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, taking upon himself all responsibility for failure.
McCain has called for the resignation of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which he points to as part of his plan for accountability. The analogy fails, I think. The proper analogy would be George Bush taking blame for the current financial crisis. In his speech earlier this week, Bush blamed homebuyers, mortgage writers, bankers and financiers. If Bush took any part of the blame himself, I missed it.
I wonder if McCain really understands the Eisenhower story. I still wonder: Who in the U.S. command would write such a thing today?
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5 Comments | Barack Obama, Business, D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower, Economics, Elections, History, Leadership, McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics, World War II | Tagged: Business, D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower, Economics, Finance Crises, History, John McCain, Leadership, Politics, President Debates | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 26, 2008
William K. Wolfrum writes “satire and commentary.” This would make great satire — but, darn it, it’s not: “Bush unleashes surge in War on Americans.”
What sort of riots does Bush expect? When?
Is there a Poe’s Law of politics? Can we impeach someone who follows that law, and quickly, please?
From Army Times:
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
* * * * *
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.
The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.
“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).
“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home … and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”
You read it right. The Army is coming to “take care of you in your home town.”
Were they being deployed to rebuild New Orleans, I’d regard it as a noble undertaking. Am I wrong to worry about what is up with this?
Whatever happened to the posse comitatus nuts?
Comments are open. What do you think?
Resources:
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4 Comments | Civil Rights, Dissent, History, Politics, U.S. Constitution, War on the Constitution | Tagged: 3rd Infantry Division, Constitution, Dissent, History, Politics, Presidential Powers, Rock of the Marne, Tinfoil Hat Club | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 25, 2008
Econ, government teachers: Are you ready to explain this one?
“China banks told to halt lending to U.S. banks“
And then this one:
“China denies shunning foreign banks“
“Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1 Comment | Business, China, Economics, Financial literacy, News, Newspapers | Tagged: Business, China, economy, News Media, Politics, Wall Street | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 25, 2008
Let’s get back to education nuts and bolts for a while. I have not commented on this partly because I’ve been on the road and just busier than most teachers with three preps, and partly because this is just jaw-droppingly unbelievable stuff.
Education nuts, anyway, maybe without the bolts.
Officials at Dallas Independent School District (DISD) announced over a week ago they had discovered an accounting error that led to hiring too many new teachers, and a $64 million shortfall. The Board of Trustees asked for more details to a plan proposed last week that includes layoffs of teachers, including some that were newly-hired.
The second report is due this afternoon, and the DISD Board will meet tonight to consider action. If people are not cut, the budget shortfall will double in the rest of this fiscal year.
Most teachers have been working on estimates that 750 teachers will be axed, which works out to about 3 from each campus.
The Dallas Morning News’s DISD Blog says fewer than 750 will go.
More employees could be laid off than expected. We’re hearing from a good source that 1,209 employees would be let go if the board approves to have a reduction in force at today’s 3 p.m. meeting.
The layoff numbers breakdown like this:
Central office – 164
Campus non-contract support staff – 250
Campus administrators – 50
Teachers – 675
Non-teaching campus support staff – 70
One more battle lost in the War on Education. For Dallas, this is a big one, for the effects on morale alone.
Coupled with the collapse of schools in Milwaukee, lack of gasoline in Tennessee, the unmitigated and unreported natural disaster from the storm named Gustav that hit Baton Rouge, the known disaster caused by Hurricane and Tropical Depression Ike, one might be excuse for thinking much of the U.S. is sinking to second- or third-world status. Oh, and did I mention that most of our larger financial institutions are in ruins, too?
As one of the more recent hires in Dallas ISD, excuse me while I go back to working with the kids.
What? You thought I’d have time to chew my fingernails? You don’t know jack about teaching, or teachers, if you thought that.
Stay tuned. Check out resources listed below.
Resources:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1 Comment | Business, Education, Education spending, Government, No Child Left Behind Act, Politics, Teaching, Texas, War on Education | Tagged: Business, Education, Education spending, Government, NCLB, Politics, Teachers, Teaching, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 24, 2008
This is how bad it is: Even accurate statements about Gov. Sarah Palin are called unfair by McCain campaign operatives and hard-shell, stiff-necked partisans.
Conservatives are complaining about media coverage of Gov. Sarah Palin. For example, they say, she is accused of cutting funding for Alaska’s Special Olympics in half. Not fair they say, and they offer the actual figures: The budget for Special Olympics for 2007 from the Alaska legislature was $650,000. Palin used her line-item veto, and cut the funding to $275,000.
Hello? Half of $650,000 would be $325,000. Palin cut the Special Olympics budget by 58%. Last time I looked at the math tables, 58% was more than half of 100%.
So, why would it not be fair to say that Palin cut the funding by half? She cut it by more than half.
Oh, no, the conservatives say: ‘You have to let us jigger the numbers first — the final total, after Palin cut it, was still more than the previous year’s allocation from the state.’
Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media takes up the conservatives’ cudgel, that it’s unfair to Sarah Palin to report her budget cuts accurately (you know, not even Dave Barry could make this stuff up).
And then Glenn Reynolds joins the morning howl, complaining that “main stream media” isn’t interested in debunking the “rumor.”
Excuse me? Why should anyone be interested in “debunking” a “rumor” which is, as the sources indicate and the conservatives’ own research demonstrates, neither rumor nor error, but hard fact?
If you needed a demonstration that conservatives cannot count, or that they will not count accurately when only honor is at stake, these sorts of stories will do.
Below the fold, for the sake of accuracy, you’ll find a longish excerpt from Charlie Martin’s analysis.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
September 22, 2008
The piece just premiered — I hope some lucky recording company has the good sense to take the tapes of the Dallas Symphony’s performances this past week, and release them quick.
“August 4, 1964,” is an oratorio covering a remarkable and fantastic coincidence in the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. On that day, the bodies of three civil rights workers who had been missing for nearly seven weeks, were found in shallow graves near Philadelphia, Mississippi — they were the victims of violence aimed at stopping blacks from voting. The incident was a chief spur to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
And also on that day, the U.S.S. Maddox reported it had been attacked by gunboats of the North Vietnamese Navy, in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson the authority to expand and escalate the war in Vietnam, which he did.
The Dallas Symphony commissioned the work, from composer Steven Stucky and librettist Gene Scheer, in commemoration of President Johnson’s 100th birth anniversary — he would have been 100 on August 27.
The music is outstanding, especially for a modern piece. The Dallas Symphony was at its flashiest and most sober best, under the baton of new conductor Jaap van Zweden. It was a spectacular performance. According to the New York Times:
Mr. van Zweden, hailed in his debut as music director a week before, scored another triumph here. And the orchestra’s assured and gritty performance was rivaled by that of the large Dallas Symphony Chorus, both corporately and individually, in shifting solo snippets charting the course of the fateful day.
The strong cast, mildly amplified, was robustly led by the Johnson of Robert Orth, last heard as another president in John Adams’s “Nixon in China” in Denver in June. Laquita Mitchell and Kelley O’Conner, wearing period hats, were touching as Mrs. Chaney and Mrs. Goodman. Understandably, the taxing role of a high-strung McNamara took a small toll on the tenor of Vale Rideout in his late aria.
The entire thing deserves more commentary, perhaps soon. There is stellar history in the choral piece. And there is this: Consider that Lyndon Johnson, the best legislator and second most-effective executive we ever had as president, got hit with these two crises the same day. On the one hand the nation got the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, executive orders and government support to end segregation and the evils it created. On the other hand, we got stuck with the disaster of the Vietnam War.
How would the nation fared had a lesser person been in the White House on that day?
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4 Comments | Art, Civil Rights, Desegregation, Government, History, Lyndon B. Johnson, Music, Politics, Vietnam, Voting Rights Act | Tagged: Arts, August 4 1964, Civil Rights Workers, Dallas Symphony, Government, Gulf of Tonkin, Heroes, History, Lyndon Johnston, Music, Politics, Symphony, Vietnam | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 21, 2008
Is Robert Reich a prophet, an economic and employment Jonah sent to Nineveh-on-the-Potomac?
Read Reich’s remarks, about the economics conditions of most Americans, including people in Pennsylvania, and Barack Obama’s observation that some people left behind by our economy are bitter.
Especially read the final three paragraphs, where he warns we are headed into even more turbulent economic waters.
Now notice the date of that piece.
What is your definition of “prophet?”
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4 Comments | Barack Obama, Campaigns, Economics, History, Obama 2008, Politics | Tagged: Barack Obama, Economics, Election 2008, Employment, History, Politics, Unemployment | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 17, 2008
Are you ready for it, teachers?
2008: I wasn’t ready to blog about it today. Texas requires one day of instruction on the Constitution in every social studies class. In government today, it happened to fit. We discussed the Constitution earlier in world history, and we will return to it at various points through the year.
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3 Comments | 1787, 1789, Bill of Rights, Freedom - Political, Government, History, Law, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 1787, 1789, Constitution Day, Government, History, Law, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 17, 2008
Al Gore bravely fought to save ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and for his efforts got a campaign to turn his good work into a joke by Karl Rove and Bush campaign, in 2000.
John McCain’s tech guy claims McCain had role in inventing the Blackberry.
Obama laughed it off.
There’s a difference between Democrats and Republicans. Have you noticed?
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Leave a Comment » | McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics, Technology | Tagged: McCain 2008, Obama 2008, Politics, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 16, 2008
It takes guts, but some Alaskans are protesting their governor’s campaign. They plan to use their First Amendment Rights while they can.
Description here, at the venerable Mudflats blog. Is it true that this protest against Palin was the largest political rally in Alaska, ever?
Photos of some truly original protest signs here, at Mamadance.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 