The United Nations Correspondents Association was scheduled to announce awards, including the Ranan Lurie Cartoon Awards for 2007, at a dinner on December 7.
I find nothing about the awards anywhere — does somebody have, or has somebody found, a list of the 2007 winners, preferably with a gallery of the cartoons?
(C’mon, New York Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC — where is the news on this? Cagle?)
2 Comments | 
Cartoons, Human Rights, Peace, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: Cartoons, Political cartoons, Politics, Ranan Lurie Awards, United Nations | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Another in an occasional series that analyzes “100 Things You Need to Know About DDT,” a junk science publication by former tobacco lobbyist Steven Milloy.
Here’s a note from Audubon a while ago (August 2004) (emphasis added):
Winged Tonic
For those dispirited by the notion that humanity has doomed itself to a lonely, sterile future in a world increasingly bereft of wild creatures, there is no tonic more curative than the peregrine falcon. Today, on cliffs, bridges, and city buildings nationwide, young peregrines are strengthening their wings. Within a few weeks, those wings will propel them at speeds near 250 mph, enabling them to kill birds as large as great blue herons, mostly by impact. City aeries are frequently monitored by TV cameras, and you can watch the progress of the hatchlings on your computer or television. (Do an Internet search to find the monitored aerie nearest you.) Before World War II the peregrine was among the planet’s most successful species, breeding on every continent and many mid-ocean islands, from the Arctic to as far south as Cape Horn. When University of Wisconsin biologist Joseph Hickey surveyed eastern peregrines in 1942, he found 350 breeding pairs. In 1963, after two decades of DDT use, he found none. But in 1972 the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT, and soon an alliance of federal agencies, conservationists, and private groups was sponsoring captive breeding and the “hacking” of young peregrines into the wild. The recovery goal had been 631 breeding pairs in the United States and Canada. By 1999, when the peregrine was taken off the Endangered Species List, there were at least 1,650.
Compare this with Milloy’s claim #77:
The decline in the U.S. peregrine falcon population occurred long before the DDT years.
[Hickey JJ. 1942. (Only 170 pairs of peregrines in eastern U.S. in 1940) Auk 59:176; Hickey JJ. 1971 Testimony at DDT hearings before EPA hearing examiner. (350 pre- DDT peregrines claimed in eastern U.S., with 28 of the females sterile); and Beebe FL. 1971. The Myth of the Vanishing Peregrine Falcon: A study in manipulation of public and official attitudes. Canadian Raptor Society Publication, 31 pages]
Here are some potential problems:
Eggs of peregrine falcon, crushed by parent due to thin shells caused by DDT. Photo copyright Steve Hopkin, http://www.ardea.com
1. Milloy offers no real citation to Hickey in 1942. The quote would be impossible to track down. Why is Milloy hiding sources, being so coy?
2. While Milloy doesn’t quote Hickey directly, Milloy’s citation of Hickey implies that Hickey’s work supports Milloy’s point. But when we read what Hickey found, according to Audubon, it contradicts Milloy’s point. If Hickey found only 170 nesting peregrines in 1940, and 350 in 1942, clearly that suggests the peregrines were doing very well, more than doubling their nests in two years. Milloy claims peregrines were on the decline, but from what little we have, it looks like their populations were rocketing up prior to DDT. Hickey developed a great reputation for his work revealing the bad effects of DDT; how is it that Milloy has found the only instant ever recorded where Hickey discovers no harm? I suspect Milloy has doctored the data, and not that he’s made a grand discovery of a missing Hickey manuscript.
3. A general decline of raptors prior to DDT does not refute the evidence that DDT killed embryoes, killed hatchlings before they could fledge, and killed fledglings before they could mature. DDT wasn’t the sole cause of the decline of peregrines, nor eagles, nor brown pelicans, but DDT was the major barrier to their recovery. The history of the war against eagles, for example, is rather well documented, as is the development of the wild lands eagles use as habitat. Eagle populations started to decline at the latest when Europeans started to settle North America. Those pressures have never gone away. But after the eagle was protected from hunting in 1918, and then with a tougher law in 1940, the decline was not ended. After 1950, eagles essentially stopped reproducing. This made recovery impossible, and this was the problem DDT caused. When DDT spraying stopped, peregrine falcon populations started to rise, and so did eagle and brown pelican populations, among others.
I have been unable to find a single study that does not corroborate the claim that DDT and its daughter products were hammering the reproduction of predator birds in North America — nor have I found a single study that says the damage has ended. Where does Milloy find any evidence to support his implied claim that DDT was not responsible? It’s not in the citations he offers.
There may be more on this issue coming. So far, nothing Milloy has said against a DDT ban, or in favor of DDT, has checked out to be truthful from the citations he gives, nor from any other source. There are 109 points in his diatribe; I’ve only researched fewer than 20 in any depth.
Other posts pointing out Milloy’s errors:
Peregrine falcon – “Mr. Milloy, you wouldn’t tell fibs about what’s killing my babies, would you?”
20 Comments | Bad Quotes, Cost of Green, DDT, Environmental protection, History, Junk science, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Cost of Green, DDT, environment, Evolution, Junk science, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
It’s a long passage, but worth the read. Go to the Audubon site for the full essay; it’s longer, and worth more. (Photo: Bald eagle, from the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
This is from an essay the great conservation curmudgeon Ted Williams published in Audubon in December 2004.
I envy young environmentalists of the 21st century, but I feel bad for them, too. They don’t know what it feels like to win big against seemingly impossible odds. When I started out, America and the world were environmentally lawless. There was no Endangered Species Act, no Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no National Environmental Policy Act, no National Forest Management Act. In 1970 I remember standing on the steps of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife field headquarters and arguing with a colleague, Joe, about the banning of DDT. “It will never happen,” he told me. When DDT was banned two years later, he said, “It won’t make any difference.”
For a while it didn’t. The March 1976 Audubon reported “considerable gloomy speculation” about the plight of endangered bald eagles in the Lower 48—more birds dying than hatching, fewer than a thousand nesting pairs. Today there are an estimated 7,000 nesting pairs. The September 1975 Audubon reported that 300 brown pelicans transplanted from Florida to Louisiana—”the Pelican State”—had died from lethal doses of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons. Today Louisiana has more than 13,000 nesting pairs. In 1972 I was assigned by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to write an article on the peregrine falcon in the East—a history piece, because the species had been extirpated from the region. By 1999 peregrines had fully recovered, and they were removed from the Endangered Species List.
The hopelessness I felt about DDT in 1970 was nothing compared with what Rachel Carson felt when she started her campaign against this World War II hero. Writing a book about DDT seemed impossible; she was a nature writer, not an investigative reporter. Barely had she taken pen to paper when she was assailed by arthritis, flu, intestinal virus, sinus infections, staph infections, ulcers, phlebitis, and breast cancer. She didn’t get discouraged; she got mad. Her ulcers, she told her editor, “might have waited till the book was done.” Radiation treatments were “a serious diversion of time.” She found the phlebitis that prevented her from walking “quite trying””not for herself but for “poor Roger,” her adopted son.
When Silent Spring appeared in 1962, Chemical World News condemned it as “science fiction.” Time magazine dismissed it as an “emotional and inaccurate outburst.” Reader’s Digest canceled a contract for a 20,000-word condensation and ran the Time piece instead. But only seven years later Time used a photo of Carson to illustrate its new Environment section. Silent Spring was not a prediction, as anti-environmentalists profess; it was a warning, full of hope. “No,” Carson wrote her friend Lois Crisler, “I myself never thought the ugly facts would dominate. . . . The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind.” If Rachel Carson could find hope in the face of what and who were closing in on her, no environmentalist has the right to feel discouraged in 2004.
Leave a Comment » | Environmental protection, History, History and art, Politics, Quotes, Rachel Carson, Science, Science and faith | Tagged: environment, hope, Politics, Quotes, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Could I cover one block of math? Family emergency, the teacher had to go, math practice assignment was all duplicated, I didn’t have a class at that time . . .
Sure.
It was a class for kids generally not on the college-bound track, certainly not on the mathematics-intensive path. In a couple of minutes three kids told me they were there because they failed the state math test, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). We got into the exercise and found it featured a whole bunch of algebraic equations that would tax my memory of the rules quite well.
As I was struggling to remember how to divide and multiply exponents in fractional forms, 15 minutes into the class a woman handed in the assignment. More than 30 equations done, each one I spot checked done correctly, all the work shown — even beautifully legible handwriting.
“You have a real facility for math,” I said. “Why are you here and not in the calculus-bound class?”
She said she had failed the TAKS math portion. I told her I found that highly unlikely.
“I can’t do story problems,” she said. “I can’t figure out how they should go.”
So here was a mathematics savant, relegated to remedial math because of a difficulty translating prose into equation.
In the old days, we’d take a kid like that, let her run as far and as fast as possible in what she was good at (higher abstract mathematics concepts), and work with her on the story problem thingy. If she’s stuck where she doesn’t learn new concepts, she probably won’t make “adequate yearly progress,” either. We have taken a kid with great math talent, and turned her into a statistic of failure.
It was a flawed sample, of course. 30 kids, one savant, three others not quite as fast but with roughly the same problem: Math is easy for them, prose is not easy, especially when it has to be translated into equations. 4/30 is 13%. Do we have that many mathematically capable kids who we flunk and put into remedial math — 13% of the total?
One way to make sure no child is left behind is to stop the train completely. If the train does not move, no one gets left behind.
No mail gets delivered, no milk gets delivered, people can’t go to far off places to study, or to sell. But nobody gets “left behind.”
Did I mention that the Texas Education Agency fired their science curriculum person in direct violation of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution? Is there a correlation there?
1 Comment | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Education assessment, Education quality, Education success, No Child Left Behind Act, Science, TAKS, Testing, Texas | Tagged: Education, math standards, Politics, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
McBlogger has an interesting, Texas-based take on the scandals at the Texas Education Agency: It’s a hallmark of Republicans in Texas government.
In other words, other agencies are similarly screwed up, and the common thread is Republican appointees out of their depth and unaware of it.
(Do short posts make this place start to look like Instapundit? Looks only — check the substance.)
Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Government, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state, Texas | Tagged: Education, Politics, Religion, scandal, Science, Texas Education Agency | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We get e-mail, sometimes good stuff — this piece from the Bill of Rights Institute. [I copied it, art, links and all — please pass it on.]
Are you ready for Bill of Rights Day, December 15? The Bill of Rights Institute has resources for teachers:
Celebrate Bill of Rights Day with the Bill of Rights Institute!
The Bill of Rights Institute invites you to celebrate Bill of Rights Day on December 15, 2007 by taking advantage of the resources on the Constitution and Bill of Rights we are offering educatorsFREE of charge. These activities will engage your students and demonstrate the importance of the Bill of Rights in their lives. Utilize the lessons on December 14th as part of a Bill of Rights Day celebration for your students or save the lessons for use throughout the school year.
Access our website and find:
- Founders Online includes audio clips, biographical essays, classroom activities
videos on our nation’s Founding Fathers- Readings for your students on the Bill of Rights
- Free, complete lesson plans for middle and high school students
- Background information from Princeton University professor Dr. Ken Kerch
on First Amendment freedoms- Links to other Bill of Rights Day resources
Check out the Bill of Rights Institute’s Bill of Rights Day site today!
Leave a Comment » | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Law, Lesson plans, Patriotism, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: Bill of Rights Day, Bill of Rights Institute, Civil Rights, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The religious bias against good education we noted here appears to have exploded into the Texas Education Agency. Unfortunately, there is an ugly political tone to the scrap.
TEA fired a top science curriculum specialist just as it starts a review of science standards, because she passed along word that a defender of science in textbooks was speaking in Austin to several people in an e-mail. The firing was urged by a political apparatchik now working inside TEA, one of several political operatives put into positions of influence in the agency in the past year or so.
(I don’t practice in Texas employment law, and Texas administrative law probably has strong employment-at-will leanings even in government agencies — but this strikes me as an illegal action on the part of TEA; we can’t fire people for doing their jobs as the law requires; we shouldn’t fire public officials for informing people about the law, nor for supporting good academics.)
Several Texas news outlets picked up the story of the firing, but to my knowledge, only the Austin American-Statesman has complained, in a Saturday editorial, “Is Misdeed a Creation of Political Doctrine?”
The education agency, of course, portrays the problem as one of insubordination and misconduct. But from all appearances, Comer was pushed out because the agency is enforcing a political doctrine of strict conservatism that allows no criticism of creationism.
This state has struggled for years with the ideological bent of the state school board, but lawmakers took away most of its power to infect education some years ago. Politicizing the Texas Education Agency, which oversees the education of children in public schools, would be a monumental mistake.
This isn’t the space to explore the debate over creationism, intelligent design and evolution. Each approach should be fair game for critical analysis, so terminating someone for just mentioning a critic of intelligent design smacks of the dogma and purges in the Soviet era.
But then, this is a new and more political time at the state’s education agency.
Robert Scott, the new education commissioner, is not an educator but a lawyer and former adviser to Gov. Rick Perry. This presents an excellent opportunity for the governor and his appointee to step in firmly to put an end to ideological witch hunts in the agency.
The person who called for Comer to be fired is Lizzette Reynolds, a former deputy legislative director for Gov. George Bush. She joined the state education agency this year as an adviser after a stint in the U.S. Department of Education.
The paper is factual and gentle: The position Ms. Reynolds filled at the U.S. Department of Education was in Texas, in a regional office, a plum often reserved for political supporters of the president’s party who need a place to draw a paycheck until the next election season.
(This where the irony bites: The Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized against creationism and the deceiving of students conducted by Ken Ham’s organization with their creationism museum; Kentucky appears to be well ahead of Texas in recognizing the dangers to education of this war against science conducted by creationists.)
Details come from the Texas Citizens for Science, and Steven Schaffersman, here. More details with extensive comments are at Pharyngula, here, here, here, and here.
The firing damages Texas’s reputation, certainly. The state is already portrayed as having an education agency run amok:
There’s a major standards review coming up, and the guy running the show is a bible-thumping clown of a dentist. Note the hint of the wider ramifications: Texas is a huge textbook market, and what goes down in Texas affects what publishers put in books that are marketed nationwide. It is time to start thinking about ending Texas’s influence. If you’re a teacher, a school board member, or an involved parent, and if you get an opportunity to evaluate textbooks for your local schools, look carefully at your biology offerings. If you’re reviewing a textbook and discover that it has been approved for use in Texas, then strike it from your list. It’s too dumb and watered down for your kids.
Nature, one of the preeminent science magazines in the world, has a blog; Texans need to reflect on the article there which lends perspective:
Attitudes to education differ round the world, but things are looking pretty odd in Texas right now. The director of the state’s science curriculum is claiming she was forced out for forwarding an email. Its content was not a risqué joke or a sleazy photo: it was a note about a forthcoming lecture by a philosopher who has been heavily involved in debates over creationism.
The Statesman reports that the Texas Education Agency had recommended firing Chris Comer for repeated misconduct and insubordination (the details of which are unclear) before she resigned. But Comer and others are saying she was forced out for seeming to endorse criticism of intelligent design. An agency memo, according to the Statesman, said: “Ms Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”
In other news, a new international ranking of the science ability of 15 year olds has been conducted by the OECD. The US is below average, a little under Latvia. Finland tops the chart. Those with spare time might find it interesting to compare this chart of the new OECD ranking, with this chart of belief in evolution.
If Ms. Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of good science, her firing explicitly endorses bad science and crappy education, and thereby contradicts the policies of the State of Texas expressed in law and regulation. Firing an employee for supporting the law, which calls for good and high academic standards, should not be the policy of political appointees; it shouldn’t be legal.
. . . [A] dismissal letter stated Comer shouldn’t have sided one way or the other on evolution, “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”
It can’t be a good thing when a state fires its head of science education for promoting science education. But that’s what happened when the Texas Education Agency put its science curriculum director Chris Comer on administrative leave in late October, leading to what she calls a forced resignation.
When the Texas Education Agency urges “neutrality” on good versus bad, you know something is very, very rotten in Austin.
Action avenues:
News links:
1 Comment | Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Science, Separation of church and state, Texas, Textbooks | Tagged: Education, Evolution, Politics, Religion, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We’ve got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We’re in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We’ve got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees.
So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what’s what, and they’re talking about — guns.
To solve the problem, we have to admit we have a problem. Talk about guns doesn’t even get close to what the problems are.
Herbert has more to say.
1 Comment | Leadership, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: GOP debates, Leadership, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Rosa Parks: “Why do you push us around?”
Officer: “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”
From Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), page 23.Photo: Mrs. Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama; photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress
Today in History at the Library of Congress states the simple facts:
On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks were also required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.
Rosa Parks made a nearly perfect subject for a protest on racism. College-educated, trained in peaceful protest at the famous Highlander Folk School, Parks was known as a peaceful and respected person. The sight of such a proper woman being arrested and jailed would provide a schocking image to most Americans. Americans jolted awake.
Often lost in the retelling of the story are the threads that tie together the events of the civil rights movement through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As noted, Parks was a trained civil rights activist. Such training in peaceful and nonviolent protest provided a moral power to the movement probably unattainable any other way. Parks’ arrest was not planned, however. Parks wrote that as she sat on the bus, she was thinking of the tragedy of Emmet Till, the young African American man from Chicago, brutally murdered in Mississippi early in 1955. She was thinking that someone had to take a stand for civil rights, at about the time the bus driver told her to move to allow a white man to take her seat. To take a stand, she remained seated. [More below the fold] Read the rest of this entry »
10 Comments | Civil Rights, Dissent, Famous quotes, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: Civil Rights, Famous quotes, History, Human Rights, Politics, Quotes, Rosa Parks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
In 2003 Physics Nobel Winner Steven Weinberg made a stunning presentation to the Texas State Board of Education on why evolution needs to be in biology texts.
Live by the physicist, die by the physicist: Paul Davies takes it back, giving aid and comfort to the intelligent design/creationist camp, in Saturday’s New York Times. While he doesn’t mention evolution or biology, the Public Spin Department at the Discovery Institute is probably at work on press releases touting Davies’ piece right now.
Oy.
13 Comments | Physics, Rampant stupidity, Science and faith, Woo | Tagged: Evolution, Physics, Politics, Religion, Science, Woo | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Put your coffee down. If you’re not ready to be outraged, don’t read any farther. Go on to the next post.
To demonstrate the barbarity and brutality of communist systems, or totalitarian governments, people often point to execution practices used in Stalinist Russia or, currently, in the People’s Republic of China. When a person is executed, usually with a bullet to the head, the family of the executed person is billed for the bullet.
Insult to injury, injury on injury, it’s heartless, the critics rightly say — and evidence of the inhumanity, the complete lack of human emotion in the government.
That’s not what this post is about. Can there be something worse?
U.S. soldiers disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan so that they cannot continue their military service are being billed by the Pentagon for their recruitment bonuses. Marty Griffin at KDKA television in Pittsburgh got the story, about a local Pennsylvania soldier (I have highlighted some parts of the story):
One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.
He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.
Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.
A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.
“I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they’re telling me they want their money back,” he explained.
It’s a slap for Fox’s mother, Susan Wardezak, who met with President Bush in Pittsburgh last May. He thanked her for starting Operation Pittsburgh Pride which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages.
He then sent her a letter expressing his concern over her son’s injuries, so she cannot understand the U.S. Government’s apparent lack of concern over injuries to countless U.S. Soldiers and demands that they return their bonuses.
No kidding.
See the video — it’s even more compelling.
Do you agree with me that this is an outrage? Do you agree this should not happen in the United States of America?
Should we act? Wait just a moment.
This is such a clear outrage, that when the news broke, the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department scrambled to say it is not so bad as it looks. Talking Points Memo Muckraker tracks the story; by now the government says it’s a mistake, and soldiers shouldn’t have to pay back the bonus.
So the official answer is that not as many soldiers were billed as Griffin claimed, and the Pentagon says they excuse the debts if the soldier complains.
What if the soldier doesn’t complain, but just pays?
How could any system do this in the first place?
Can we believe an administration that has lied to get out of accountability for so many other scrapes in this war?
Keep checking for followups.
Also, if you have received one of these letters, or if you know someone who has, please tell us.
Be ready to act by noting these numbers:
Watch the news. If this outrage is not corrected, your voice will be important.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
3 Comments | Afghanistan, Ethics, Iraq, Patriotism, Politics, veterans, War | Tagged: insulting soldiers, Patriotism, Politics, veterans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Carnival of the Liberals #52 comes to us from Yikes! It’s number 52, marking two years of bringing the best of liberalism, classic and otherwise.
In honor of the Big Bloggy Meeting hosted by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State last week in Washington, this issue focuses on issues of separation of church and state. This is the 60th year of AU — so celebrate some freedom, will you?
The next edition of the Carnival of the Liberals will be hosted by Neural Gourmet, and will be a “best of” issue for the past year. Here’s the official plug:
The next edition of Carnival of The Liberals on December 5th is the first edition of CotL’s third year and will be hosted by Leo at Neural Gourmet.
CotL #53 will be the annual “best of” edition. The rules for this edition are somewhat different from previous editions of CotL:
- It is restricted to only bloggers who have appeared in CotL over the past year
- Bloggers should send in what they consider to be their “best” post from the past year that hasn’t appeared in CotL
- From those submitted I’ll pick what I consider to be the “best of the best” and run those (I’ll also link to the rest on the CotL site).
And finally, Carnival of The Liberals is looking for hosts for next year. If you would like to have the fun of reading ALL the posts submitted, not just the ones selected, email Leo (“tng”) Lincourt at: leolincourt AT gmail DOT com.
Leave a Comment » | Politics, Reason, Weblogs | Tagged: Carnival of the Liberals, Politics, Reason | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
One of the clues that someone is financing a public relations campaign for DDT and against care for the environment is the way “news” keeps popping out about the benefits of DDT, though there is no natural process for making such news in back of the stories.
We old PR flacks recognize that without the push from an agent, these stories wouldn’t get written.
Just over a month ago there was a flurry of stories about how DDT was “effective” even after mosquitoes developed immunity to it, because it repels mosquitoes, too — even though that wasn’t what the researchers concluded, and that wasn’t the major thrust of the research article.
We also saw a Hoover Institute fellow call for DDT to be used to fight the spread of West Nile virus, though no public health official called for such action, though there is no particular need for such a drastic change in policy, and despite the fact that DDT spraying for the mosquitoes that carry West Nile is one of the least effective means of killing them (DDT is not a larvacide, and larvacides are called for to combat West Nile).
This month? No real news, but the American Enterprise Institute, which nominally is pitched at promoting business interests, issued a new report recycling all the old canards, calling for increased use of DDT in Africa to fight malaria, despite already expanded use, and despite a lack of call from health officials to spray more DDT.
Here’s how it looks on the internet:
November 5, 2007 – Wall Street Journal opinion piece by AEI’s Roger Bate, over the years one of the most ardent salesmen of DDT as the solution to nearly every problem, so long as it bashed environmentalists. WSJ notes the piece is a shorter version of the AEI report.
November 1, 2007 – TCS piece by AEI’s Roger Bate, complaining generally about environmentalists.
Random DDT stuff, some of which may turn into separate posts:
6 Comments | DDT, Environmental protection, History, History Revisionism, Malaria, Public health, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: DDT, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Vouchers in Utah have the wooden stake right in the heart. That’s one proposal in one state. More voucher proposals are promised, and the debate continues.
Voucher advocates generally make a plea that colleges have something akin to school vouchers with Pell Grants (Basic Education Opportunity Grants), Stafford Grants, the GI Bill and other federal programs, plus many state programs, which give money to a student to use at a college of the student’s choice.
Why won’t this work for kindergartners, 8th graders and 10th graders? the voucher advocates ask.
The short answer is that we regard college students as adults. Beyond that are several other differences between elementary schools and colleges that we should, perhaps, explore.
Texas Ed: Comments on Education from Texas has a couple of posts that provide some insights to the issues. In the first one, “We Have Vouchers for Higher Education,” the question is raised about why not let elementary students operate like veterans, and take their government money where they choose to.
In the second, “Vouchers Are About Choice, Not Quality,” we get a glimpse of real life — parents fighting to keep open their neighborhood school, despite there being better performing schools available to take their kids.
We might want to compare systems, at least briefly.
1 Comment | College, Education quality, Education reform, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Technology, Tenure | Tagged: colleges, Education, NCLB, Politics, school choice, School vouchers, Teachers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Sticking by the error
November 17, 2007Neil Boortz has a bottomless well of venom. Boortz appears to be the chief source of the mean-spirited, cut-from-whole-cloth fables about Hillary Clinton being next to Marx.
Checking to see whether he had run a correction of those errors* (he did not), I found this little spittle of acid in that same post from October 8: Boortz wonders about former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger advising Hillary Clinton’s campaign, citing Berger’s admission that he took documents out of the National Archives as a basis for some conspiracy about a cover-up of Bill Clinton’s actions prior to September 11, 2001.
Berger pled to misdemeanor charges. He had the right to view the documents, especially since many of the documents he was reviewing were his own. NARA staff said he took copies of documents only. He was working to prepare a report to the 9-11 Commission at the time.
Neil, here are the facts: Berger was right about Osama bin Laden, years before you ever thought about it. Berger was the guy who was left standing at the White House door, ready to brief President George W. Bush on the need to continue chasing Osama bin Laden and the threat al Quaeda posed to America when Condoleeza Rice informed him that the Bush administration would not continue the chase. Berger was the guy who first got the news that Bush was letting al Quaeda off the hook.
There is great value in getting advice from people who seem to have an ability to see the future, or at least get the present right. Boortz can’t even bring himself to admit error for a silly quiz. We shouldn’t expect him to admit the larger error: Sandy Berger was right about Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda, and it was a nasty, damaging error for the Bush group to brush him off and ignore his warnings. Now we are involved in a great, perhaps misguided war that could have been avoided had Bush listened to Sandy Berger in January 2001.
It must be painful for Boortz to even imagine such things.
It’s a great idea for Berger to advise Clinton, or anyone else, because George W. Bush didn’t allow it, would not listen. Nearly 10,000 Americans are dead, 100,000 to more than a million Iraqis and Afghanis are dead, the U.S. has a multi-trillion-dollar debt, and the entire planet is a lot less safe because of Bush’s error. Let’s not compound the error.
(Boortz’s radio show is carried on a backwater AM station here in Dallas — oddly on KSL’s old clear channel frequency. I’ve never heard it. Is he this reckless with facts on all things? If the FCC were alive today, such inaccuracies might endanger a license, back when broadcasters had to broadcast in the public interest. Nostalgia is appropriate here. Too bad such broadcasters are not required to be licensed like history teachers; worse that Boortz doesn’t work for accuracy himself.)
* No, I don’t really believe Boortz simply erred; but it’s polite to pretend so, so that he may more gracefully make corrections.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.