Cool stuff: Richard Wiseman’s Top 10 Science Party Tricks for Christmas

I especially like pouring the carbon dioxide to put out the candles:

Wiseman’s blog is worth visiting from time to time — especially if you’re a teacher.

Who invented Santa Claus? Who really wrote the “Night Before Christmas?”

An encore post from 2007

Thomas Nast invented Santa Claus? Clement C. Moore didn’t write the famous poem that starts out, “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house . . . ?”

The murky waters of history from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub soak even our most cherished ideas and traditions.

But isn’t that part of the fun of history?

Thomas Nast’s first published drawing featuring Santa Claus; for Harper’s Weekly, “A Journal of Civilization,” January 3, 1863 Nast portrayed the elf distributing packages to Union troops: “Santa Claus in camp.” Nast (1840-1904) was 23 when he drew this image.

Yes, Virginia (and California, too)! Thomas Nast created the image of Santa Claus most of us in the U.S. know today. Perhaps even more significant than his campaign against the graft of Boss Tweed, Nast’s popularization of a fat, jolly elf who delivers good things to people for Christmas makes one of the great stories in commercial illustration. Nast’s cartoons, mostly for the popular news publication Harper’s Weekly, created many of the conventions of modern political cartooning and modeled the way in which an illustrator could campaign for good, with his campaign against the graft of Tammany Hall and Tweed. But Nast’s popular vision of Santa Claus can be said to be the foundation for the modern mercantile flurry around Christmas.

Nast is probably ensconced in a cartoonists’ hall of fame. Perhaps he should be in a business or sales hall of fame, too.  [See also Bill Casselman's page, "The Man Who Designed Santa Claus.]

Nast’s drawings probably drew some inspiration from the poem, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” traditionally attributed to Clement C. Moore, a New York City lawyer, published in 1822. The poem is among the earliest to describe the elf dressed in fur, and magically coming down a chimney to leave toys for children; the poem invented the reindeer-pulled sleigh.

Modern analysis suggests the poem was not the work of Moore, and many critics and historians now attribute it to Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828) following sleuthing by Vassar College Prof. Don Foster in 2000. Fortunately for us, we do not need to be partisans in such a query to enjoy the poem (a complete copy of which is below the fold).

The Library of Congress still gives Moore the credit. When disputes arise over who wrote about the night before Christmas, is it any wonder more controversial topics produce bigger and louder disputes among historians?

Moore was not known for being a poet. The popular story is that he wrote it on the spur of the moment:

Moore is thought to have composed the tale, now popularly known as “The Night Before Christmas,” on December 24, 1822, while traveling home from Greenwich Village, where he had bought a turkey for his family’s Christmas dinner.

Inspired by the plump, bearded Dutchman who took him by sleigh on his errand through the snow-covered streets of New York City, Moore penned A Visit from St. Nicholas for the amusement of his six children, with whom he shared the poem that evening. His vision of St. Nicholas draws upon Dutch-American and Norwegian traditions of a magical, gift-giving figure who appears at Christmas time, as well as the German legend of a visitor who enters homes through chimneys.

Again from the Library of Congress, we get information that suggests that Moore was a minor celebrity from a well-known family with historical ties that would make a good “connections” exercise in a high school history class, perhaps (”the link from Aaron Burr’s treason to Santa Claus?”): (read more, below the fold)

Clement Moore was born in 1779 into a prominent New York family. His father, Benjamin Moore, president of Columbia University, in his role as Episcopal Bishop of New York participated in the inauguration of George Washington as the nation’s first president. The elder Moore also administered last rites to Alexander Hamilton after he was mortally wounded in a tragic duel with Aaron Burr.

A graduate of Columbia, Clement Moore was a scholar of Hebrew and a professor of Oriental and Greek literature at the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan. [See comment from Pam Bumsted below for more on Moore.] He is said to have been embarrassed by the light-hearted verse, which was made public without his knowledge in December 1823. Moore did not publish it under his name until 1844.

Tonight, American children will be tucked in under their blankets and quilts and read this beloved poem as a last “sugarplum” before slipping into dreamland. Before they drift off, treat them to a message from Santa, recorded by the Thomas Edison Company in 1922.

“Santa Claus Hides in Your Phonograph“
By Arthur A. Penn, Performed by Harry E. Humphrey.
Edison, 1922.
Coupling date: 6/20/1922. Cutout date: 10/31/1929.
Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

Listen to this recording (RealAudio Format)

Listen to this recording (wav Format, 8,471 Kb)

But Henry Livingston was no less noble or historic. He hailed from the Livingtons of the Hudson Valley (one of whose farms is now occupied by Camp Rising Sun of the Louis August Jonas Foundation, a place where I spent four amazing summers teaching swimming and lifesaving). Livingston’s biography at the University of Toronto site offers another path for a connections exercise (”What connects the Declaration of Independence, the American invasion of Canada, the famous poem about a visit from St. Nick, and George W. Bush?”):

Henry Livingston Jr. was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on Oct. 13, 1748. The Livingston family was one of the important colonial and revolutionary families of New York. The Poughkeepsie branch, descended from Gilbert, the youngest son of Robert Livingston, 1st Lord of Livingston Manor, was not as well off as the more well-known branches, descended from sons Robert and Philip. Two other descendants of Gilbert Livingston, President George Walker Herbert Bush and his son, President-Elect George W. Bush, though, have done their share to bring attention to this line. Henry’s brother, Rev. John Henry Livingston, entered Yale at the age of 12, and was able to unite the Dutch and American branches of the Dutch Reformed Church. At the time of his death, Rev. Livingston was president of Rutgers University. Henry’s father and brother Gilbert were involved in New York politics, and Henry’s granduncle was New York’s first Lt. Governor. But the law was the natural home for many of Henry’s family. His brother-in-law, Judge Jonas Platt, was an unsuccessful candidate for governor, as was his daughter Elizabeth’s husband, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Smith Thompson. Henry’s grandson, Sidney Breese, was Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Known for his encyclopedic knowledge and his love of literature, Henry Livingston was a farmer, surveyor and Justice of the Peace, a judicial position dealing with financially limited criminal and civil cases. One of the first New Yorkers to enlist in the Revolutionary Army in 1775, Major Henry Livingston accompanied his cousin’s husband, General Montgomery, in his campaign up the Hudson River to invade Canada, leaving behind his new wife, Sarah Welles, and their week-old baby, on his Poughkeepsie property, Locust Grove. Baby Catherine was the subject of the first poem currently known by Major Livingston. Following this campaign, Livingston was involved in the War as a Commissioner of Sequestration, appropriating lands owned by British loyalists and selling them for the revolutionary cause. It was in the period following Sarah’s early death in 1783, that Major Livingston published most of his poems and prose, anonymously or under the pseudonym of R. Ten years after the death of Sarah, Henry married Jane Patterson, the daughter of a Dutchess County politician and sister of his next-door neighbor. Between both wives, Henry fathered twelve children. He published his good-natured, often occasional verse from 1787 in many journals, including Political Barometer, Poughkeepsie Journal, and New-York Magazine. His most famous poem, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” was until 2000 thought to have been the work of Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), who published it with his collected poems in 1844. Livingston died Feb. 29, 1828.

More on Henry Livingston and his authorship of the Christmas poem here.

• Probably the most popular of Thomas Nast’s drawings of Santa Claus, “Merry Old Santa Claus,” Harper’s Weekly, January 1, 1881. From The Ohio State University Library’s Thomas Nast Portfolio.

Our views of Santa Claus owe a great deal also to the Coca-Cola advertising campaign. Coca-Cola first noted Santa’s use of the drink in a 1922 campaign to suggest Coke was a year-round drink (100 years after the publication of Livingston’s poem). The company’s on-line archives gives details:

In 1930, artist Fred Mizen painted a department store Santa in a crowd drinking a bottle of Coke. The ad featured the world’s largest soda fountain, which was located in the department store of Famous Barr Co. in St. Louis, Mo. Mizen’s painting was used in print ads that Christmas season, appearing in The Saturday Evening Post in December 1930.

• 1936 Coca-Cola Santa cardboard store display

Archie Lee, the D’Arcy Advertising Agency executive working with The Coca-Cola Company, wanted the next campaign to show a wholesome Santa as both realistic and symbolic. In 1931, The Coca-Cola Company commissioned Michigan-born illustrator Haddon Sundblom to develop advertising images using Santa Claus — showing Santa himself, not a man dressed as Santa, as Mizen’s work had portrayed him.

• 1942 original oil painting – ‘They Remembered Me’

For inspiration, Sundblom turned to Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (commonly called “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”). Moore’s description of St. Nick led to an image of Santa that was warm, friendly, pleasantly plump and human. For the next 33 years, Sundblom painted portraits of Santa that helped to create the modern image of Santa — an interpretation that today lives on in the minds of people of all ages, all over the world.

Santa Claus is a controversial figure. Debates still rage among parents about the wisdom of allowing the elf into the family’s home, and under what conditions. Theologians worry that the celebration of Christmas is diluted by the imagery. Other faiths worry that the secular, cultural impact of Santa Claus damages their own faiths (few other faiths have such a popular figure, and even atheists generally give gifts and participate in Christmas rituals such as putting up a decorated tree).

For over 100 years, Santa Claus has been a popular part of commercial, cultural and religious life in America. Has any other icon endured so long, or so well?

________________________
Below:
From the University of Toronto Library’s Representative Poetry Online

Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828)

Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas

1 ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house,

2 Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

3 The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

4 In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

5 The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

6 While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads,

7 And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,

8 Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap –

9 When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

10 I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

11 Away to the window I flew like a flash,

12 Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

13 The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,

14 Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;

15 When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

16 But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,

17 With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

18 I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

19 More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

20 And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:

21 “Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,

22 “On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;

23 “To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

24 “Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

25 As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,

26 When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

27 So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

28 With the sleigh full of Toys — and St. Nicholas too:

29 And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

30 The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

31 As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

32 Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:

33 He was dress’d all in fur, from his head to his foot,

34 And his clothes were all tarnish’d with ashes and soot;

35 A bundle of toys was flung on his back,

36 And he look’d like a peddler just opening his pack:

37 His eyes — how they twinkled! his dimples how merry,

38 His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;

39 His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.

40 And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

41 The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

42 And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.

43 He had a broad face, and a little round belly

44 That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly:

45 He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

46 And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;

47 A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

48 Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

49 He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

50 And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,

51 And laying his finger aside of his nose

52 And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

53 He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

54 And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:

55 But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight –

56 Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto. Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Be sure to visit this site for more information on this poem, on Maj. Livingston, and on poetry in general.

Quote of the moment: Mark Twain, a majority of fools

Illustration from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884 edition - the King, "Travelling by Rail" - Wikimedia. (The "King" is being tarred, feathered, and "ridden out of town on a rail.")

Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them.

But the king says: “Cuss the doctor! What do we k’yer for HIM? Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter XXVI

What if Al Gore were wrong about global warming? That would be great news.

It’s a point that the denialists just don’t get.  If Gore were wrong, if warming isn’t occurring, or if the warming were found to be part of a deeper cycle and all we need to do is hang on for another five or six years until the cycle shifts, that would be great news.

No one would complain about a study that actually showed that.

But no study shows that.  And the e-mails that somebody purloined from an English research center, if the worst allegations about scientists were true, can’t affect warming.  In fact, as I understand it, the chart that was “doctored” got its new, non-tree-ring data from actual thermometer readings — which, of course, show warming.

Worse, the chart’s predictions for following years turn out to be low!  Warming is outpacing some of the pessimists’ predictions.

Johann Hari, a columnist with the internet-fueled London Independent, discusses how good the news would be, in a missive at Huffington Post.

Every day, I pine for the global warming deniers to be proved right. I loved the old world – of flying to beaches wherever we want, growing to the skies, and burning whatever source of energy came our way. I hate the world to come that I’ve seen in my reporting from continent after continent – of falling Arctic ice shelves, of countries being swallowed by the sea, of vicious wars for the water and land that remains. When I read the works of global warming deniers like Nigel Lawson or Ian Plimer, I feel a sense of calm washing over me. The nightmare is gone; nothing has to change; the world can stay as it was.

But then I go back to the facts. However much I want them to be different, they sit there, hard and immovable. Nobody disputes that greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, like a blanket holding in the Sun’s rays. Nobody disputes that we are increasing the amount of those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And nobody disputes that the world has become considerably hotter over the past century. (If you disagree with any of these statements, you’d fail a geography GCSE).

Alas, there is no significant or credible evidence that warming is not occurring, nor that we humans are not playing a huge role.

So, in Copenhagen where the world’s leaders and other policy makers are meeting this week to discuss the situation, there will be no champagne to toast an end to global warming.

That would be good news.  It’s not the news we get.

Also see:

• Gordon Brown slams climate change skeptics as ‘anti-science’; also here at the original

Black Forest Cafe and the “Too Fat Polka”

Foray to the Container Store a success, the question:  What to do about dinner?

Kathryn asked, “How about that little German joint in back of Half Price Books?”

The Black Forest Cafe and Bakery.  Legendary for its Black Forest Cake.  For years it had a small shop inside the “mother ship” of Half Price Books a half-block away.  Before Starbucks, in Dallas there was the Black Forest Cafe.

It’s really more like a delicatessan.  Out of the way.  A real hidden kitchen of Dallas.  A refuge for Germans and lovers of German meats, mustards, chocolates.

Not immune to kitsch, though.

We were surprised to find the place packed late on a Friday.  At a couple of tables, obviously a part.  A private function?  We found a table at the rear of the cafe.

And along the way we passed the guy in leiderhosen.  He carried a large, burgundy-colored accordion with a German-sounding name.

Soon after we got our seat, he stood up at a microphone in a corner of the place, said a few things and I heard “most popular song of 1957.”  Vic Damone on an accordian?  Frank Sinatra?  Buddy Holly?

“Too Fat Polka!”  Kathryn and I both laughed.  We knew it from Bob Wills’ repertoire, old cowboy movies.  In a crowd of mostly young Dallasites, we would be the only ones to recall it (1957?).

From the opening notes and especially through the chorus, the entire crowd sang along.

Who knew?

The Hungarian-spiced bratwursts exploded with flavor, and the mustard was perfect.

Note: No, it was 1947.  An Arthur Godfrey success, McGuire Sisters.   And anyone else who had a band and a recording contract in 1947.

Geography quiz: In space, who will accept your teeming masses?

What is this famous landmark?

This could be an interesting geography or history bell ringer.  What are these famous sites pictured above?

Answer below the fold.

Encore post: Rosa Parks, December 1, 1955

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]

Nathan Wolfe’s jungle search for viruses | Video on TED.com (Why it’s important to beat H1N1, now)

Here’s Nathan Wolfe explaining how viruses work, quickly and at a high enough level to be entertaining, and explaining why we need to worry about H1N1.

more about “Nathan Wolfe’s jungle search for viru…“, posted with vodpod

Wolfe also explained a lot at the TED Blog:

Take us back a step or two: How did swine flu enter into the human population?

Swine flu has been known since at least the early part of the 20th century, since the 1930s. It was originally a virus of bird origin — all influenza viruses were originally bird viruses — and it probably spread to humans before it was in pigs.

Now, we still haven’t received definitive information on the underlying genetics of this particular virus. But initial reports suggest that it may be what’s known as a “mosaic virus,” which includes components of swine influenzas, bird influenzas and human influenzas. A cosmopolitan virus like that wouldn’t be unprecedented. (Editor’s Note: see Joe DeRisi’s 2006 TEDTalk for more on state-of-the-art virus detection.)

But in any case, this is a virus that appears to come from pigs, and pigs in close proximity spread the flu in much the same way that humans do — coughing, sneezing, and so on. The virus probably initially entered into human populations through people who work with livestock.

Is swine flu here to stay?

Whether this particular virus will sustain itself and become a permanent part of the human landscape is unclear, but that’s certainly what we’re watching for. As it is, the virus may just disappear because of the weather; summers aren’t good for flu viruses.

So this heat wave is working in our favor?

It might be. The virus has had a good start, from the flu perspective, considering that this is really the end of the season. But the unseasonably hot weather may bode poorly for this virus’ potential to establish itself definitively and cause a pandemic. Had this happened in September or October, it would be much more concerning.

Having said that, it’s not impossible that a virus like this might “go into hiding” — in the southern hemisphere or the tropics — and might come to light again next year. So there will be a lot of discussion about expanding the fall flu vaccine to try to control it next cycle.

Is it really possible for us to prevent future outbreaks like this?

Yes, I believe it is. We spend tons of money trying to predict complex phenomena like tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes. There’s no reason to believe that a pandemic is harder to predict than a tsunami. And we’d be foolish not to include forecasting and prevention as part of our overall portfolio to fight these pandemics.

More resources:

• Wolfe on the origins of malaria
• GVFI – the Global Virus Forecasting Initiative
• The Edge, Wolf on “Waiting for the Final Plague”

Help this post go viral:

Time to start making huge stone heads

Well, maybe not yet.

But consider Jared Diamond’s 1997 essay in Discover:

In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?

Among the most riveting mysteries of human history are those posed by vanished civilizations. Everyone who has seen the abandoned buildings of the Khmer, the Maya, or the Anasazi is immediately moved to ask the same question: Why did the societies that erected those structures disappear?

Diamond’s essay appears in different, and longer form (as I recall) as a chapter in his book Collapse.  That book is all about why civilizations collapse.

A lot of it boils down to wasting of resources.  Easter Island had not always been the grass-only rock with just a couple of thousand people clinging to a desperate existence, as Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen found it on Easter Sunday, 1722 (April 5).  When the ancestors of the tiny population found the island, it had forests, and probably animals, and rich enough resources to support a larger population.

Until they deforested it, hunted to near extinction every animal that couldn’t escape, and caused the collapse of their own civilization.

Is this an analogy for what humans are doing to the planet now with pollution, especially atmospheric-warming air pollution?

Diamond concluded his essay:

I suspect, though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. After all, there are those hundreds of abandoned statues to consider. The forest the islanders depended on for rollers and rope didn’t simply disappear one day-it vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation. Our Pacific Northwest loggers are only the latest in a long line of loggers to cry, “Jobs over trees!” The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect: yes, this year we cleared those woods over there, but trees are starting to grow back again on this abandoned garden site here. Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Their children could no more have comprehended their parents’ tales than my eight-year-old sons today can comprehend my wife’s and my tales of what Los Angeles was like 30 years ago.

Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.

By now the meaning of Easter Island for us should be chillingly obvious. Easter Island is Earth writ small. Today, again, a rising population confronts shrinking resources. We too have no emigration valve, because all human societies are linked by international transport, and we can no more escape into space than the Easter Islanders could flee into the ocean. If we continue to follow our present course, we shall have exhausted the world’s major fisheries, tropical rain forests, fossil fuels, and much of our soil by the time my sons reach my current age.

Resources:

• Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker review of Diamond’s book, Collapse;  the review is notable for pullling out Diamond’s recounting of what happened to the Viking attempt to colonize Greenland, a subject of great misunderstanding in climate debate
• Explanation and discussion of the text of Collapse at Wikipedia
• Grist discussion of the book
• TED Blog on Diamond and the book

Jared Diamond in a 2003 appearance at TED:

No health insurance: Can you look this man in the eye and tell him you want to let him die?

Our National Conscience, Nicholas Kristof asked the question in his column a week ago:  Are we going to let John die?

45,000 Americans die each year because of a lack of health insurance.  What do you think:  Should we allow John to die?

Which system saves John’s life, “socialism,” or “free enterprise?”

Here, you can help:

UPDATE: Several readers have asked how they can help or if there is a fund to help John. There isn’t any such fund, but with John and Esther’s permission I’m posting their mailing address: John and Esther Brodniak, 770 W Main St., Sheridan, OR 97378.

Check Kristof’s blog for more details, and nearly 400 comments.

Starlings of climate change denial do about-face on data-corruption and fraud

Funny.  Zumwalt never complained when the data-corruption and fraud were all on the denialists’ side.

I am reminded that, as of the end of November 2009, there are incredibly few science papers (see CCPO’s note) — meaning papers based on research, published in peer-review journals — which make any case contrary to global warming occurring, nor even against the link that much of current warming is caused by human activities.

Under softball rules, the game would have been called against denialists long ago.  Now they want to claim victory on a disqualification, when they violated that rule with gusto through the entire game so far?

Good excuse to get to Houston: QWERTY, a typewriter exhibt at the Museum of Printing History

Well, yeah, its that kind of quirky museum you love — one topic, so you know the kind of history you’re going to get.

And this particular subtopic?  Just right square in the middle of the road — that is, up my alley!

QWERTY Exhibit at the Museum of Printing History, Houston

QWERTY: A Typewriter Retrospective

October 8, 2009– March 20, 2010 Typewriters inhabit a special place in the American psyche. No longer in widespread use, typewriters have been outsourced by the desktop computer, although they maintain a special air of nostalgia. Americans remember their junior high typing class, while many of today’s youngsters have never set eyes on such a machine. Tucked away in closets and in office corners, many typewriters are still occasionally put to good use. In addition to being beautiful specimens of design, who can forget the characteristic music of taps and bells created by a manual typewriter? From the collection of the Museum of Printing History.

More details on the Museum:

The Museum of Printing History
1324 W. Clay Street
Houston, Texas 77019
Hours:
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Tuesday – Saturday
713-522-4652
Free admission for self-guided tours

Sources: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and Trial

More than just as tribute to the victims, more than just a disaster story, the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire, and the following events including the trial of the company owners, lay out issues students can see clearly.  I think the event is extremely well documented and adapted for student projects.  In general classroom use, however, the event lays a foundation for student understanding.

A couple of good websites crossed my browser recently, and I hope you know of them.

• From Cornell University’s Institute for Labor Relations, a site the features writings of some of the victims, headlines of the times, and several other documents suitable for classroom use or in building a Documents-based Question for an AP class.
• From the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the home of the Douglas Linder’s “Famous Trials” page, the story of the trial of the owners of the company (they were acquitted).  This site is rich in information and images, a real gold mine for in-class slide presentations and student projects.

1911 cartoon from a New York paper shows the owners dressed in dollar bills, holding shut the door that barred the safe exit of so many women during the fire. Courtesy UMKC Famous Trials site; New York Evening Journal, March 31, 1911

Events around the fire illuminate so much of American history, and of government (which Texas students take in their senior year):

• Labor issues are obvious to us; the incident provides a dramatic backdrop for the explanation of what unions sought, why workers joined unions, and a sterling example of a company’s clumsy and destructive resistance to resolving the workers’ issues.
• How many Progressive Era principles were advanced as a result of the aftermath of the fire, and the trial?
• Effective municipal government, responsive to voters and public opinion, can be discerned in the actions of the City of New York in new fire codes, and action of other governments is clear in the changes to labor laws that resulted.
• The case provides a dramatic introduction to the workings and, sometimes, misfirings of the justice system.
• With the writings from the Cornell site, students can climb into the events and put themselves on the site, in the courtroom, and in the minds of the people involved.
• Newspaper clippings from the period demonstrate the lurid nature of stories, used to sell newspapers — a working example of yellow journalism.
• Newspapers also provide a glimpse into the workings of the Muckrakers, in the editorial calls for reform.
• Overall, the stories, the photos, the cartoons, demonstrate the workings of the mass culture mechanisms of the time.

Use the sites in good education, and good health.

Obama’s well-qualified cabinet: Conservatives hoaxed by “J. P. Morgan” chart that verifies prejudices

Barack Obama’s cabinet is highly qualified on almost every score.  It’s the first cabinet to feature someone who has already received a Nobel prize in the field (Teddy Roosevelt as head of his own cabinet excepted).  Obama pulled highly qualified people from a lot of important positions, from both major parties, and from across the nation.

Conservatives, religiously believing Obama’s administration cannot be allowed to succeed, erupted in bluster this past week when a chart mysteriously cited to an unfound (by me) “J. P. Morgan study” claimed Obama’s cabinet has less that 10% who have private sector experience.

“No business people!” the bloggers splutter.  “However can the government function?”

Chart claimed by American Enterprise Institute to be from J. P. Morgan, hoaxing experience data of Obama cabinet, underestimating by 700%

Gullibles rarely ask good questions, so we don’t need to bother with an answer to the question, if it’s a stupid question.  And in order to determine whether it’s a stupid question, we ought to ask whether the chart has any resemblance to reality.

According to the White House website:

The Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments — the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General.

Six others have “cabinet-rank” status:  White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, OMB Director Peter Orzag, U.S. Trade Representative Ronald Kirk, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer.

Vice President, plus 15 executive department heads, plus six others:  22 people.

If only 10% had private sector experience, that would be 2.2 of them.  Each of the 22 people comprises about 4.5% of the cabinet.  Two of them with private experience would be 9% of the cabinet.  Three with private experience would reveal the chart to be in error.  Would it be possible to create a cabinet of 22 people and have only two of them with private experience?

The bullshit detectors in the bloggers’ minds should have been clanging like crazy when they saw that chart.

No one has cited any methodology for the chart, so I figure it was created on a napkin by interns for the American Enterprise Institute at lunch, and it took off before anyone could check the claims made for accuracy.  I’m a bit reluctant to blame it on J. P. Morgan, but maybe AEI can provide the interpleader to pin the blame on that private sector organization — which would be one more demonstration that private sector experience may not be all that AEI tries to crack it up to be.  Before counting, I guessed that Obama’s cabinet has more like 50% with private sector experience; it turns out to be more like 80%.  So the question now becomes, how and why did the chart originator discount real private-sector experience?

The “J. P. Morgan” chart from AEI is a hoax.  Here’s the cabinet, listed in succession order, with their private sector experience; members were listed from the White House website; biographical data were taken from Wikipedia, supplemented by official departmental biographies:

• Vice President Joe Biden – Private experience:  Yes.  4.5% of the cabinet.  Biden’s father worked in the private sector his entire life — unsuccessfully for a critical period.  Biden attended a private university’s law school (Syracuse), and operated a successful-because-of-property-management law practice for three years before winning election to the U.S. Senate.  (I regard a campaign as a private business, too — and Biden’s first campaign was masterful entrepreneurship.)
• Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – Private experience:  Yes, significant.  9% of the cabinet.  Extremely successful private practice lawyer in Arkansa for the Rose Law Firm, one of the “Top 100 Lawyers” in a classicly dog-eat-dog business.
• Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner – Private experience:  Yes, significant.  13.6% of the cabinet (The chart’s error is established in the first three people checked — surely no one bothered to make a serious count of the cabinet in compiling the chart.) Geithner traveled with world with his Ford Foundation-employed father.  He graduated from private universities, with an A.B. from Dartmouth and an M.A. in economics from Johns Hopkins.  Starting his career, he worked three years in the private sector with Kissinger Associates.  After significant positions at Treasury and State Departments, he again ventured into the private sector with the Council on Foreign Relations; from their he moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — in what is at worst a semi-public organization.  Running a Federal Reserve Branch is among the most intensive jobs one can have in private sector economics and management.   If an analyst at a bank named after J. P. Morgan didn’t understand that, one wonders just what the person does understand.
• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – Private sector experience:  Yes, at high levels.  18% of the cabinet.  Bob Gates spent a career with the Central Intelligence Agency, finally as Director of Central Intelligence, an executive level position with no equal in private enterprise.  He retired in 1993, and then worked in a variety of university positions, and joined several different corporate boards; in 1999 he was appointed interim Dean of the George W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, and was appointed President of Texas A&M in 2002, where he served until his appointment as Secretary of Defense in 2006.
• Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  23% of the cabinet, total.  After a sterling career in the Justice Department, as a Ronald Reagan appointment to be a federal judge, as a U.S. Attorney, and again at the Justice Department, Holder spent eight years representing high profile private clients at Covington  &  Burling in Washington, D.C.  His clients included the National Football League, the giant pharmaceutical company Merck, and Chiquita Brands, a U.S. company with extensive international business.
• Secretary of Interior Kenneth L. Salazar – Private sector experience: Yes.  27% of Obama cabinet.  Besides a distinguished career in government, as advisor and Cabinet Member with Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, Salazar was a successful private-practice attorney from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1994 to 1998 when he won election as Colorado’s Attorney General.  As Senator, Salazar maintained a good voting record for a Republican business-supporting senator; Salazar is a Democrat.  Salazar’s family is in ranching, and he is usually listed as a “rancher from Colorado,” with life experience in the ranching business at least equal to that of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner.
• Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack - Private sector experience:  Yes, signficant.  32% of Obama cabinet.  Vilsack spent 23 years in private practice as an attorney, 1975 to 1998, while holding not-full-time elective offices such as mayor and state representative.  He joined government as Governor of Iowa in 1998, and except for two years, has been in employed in government since then.
• Secretary of Commerce Gary F. Locke – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  36% of Obama cabinet.  As near as I can determine, Locke was in private law practice from 1975 through his election as Executive in King County in 1993 (is that a full-time position?).  He was elected Governor of Washington in 1996.  After leaving office in 2005, he again worked in private practice with Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, until 2009.  22 years in private practice, three years as Executive of King County, eight years as Governor of Washington.
• Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis – Private sector experience:  Yes, but I consider it insignificant.  36% of Obama cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  Solis’s father was a Teamster and union organizer who contracted lead poisoning on the job; her mother was an assembly line worker for Mattel Toys.  She overachieved in high school and ignored her counselor’s advice to avoid college, and earned degrees from Cal Poly-Pomona and USC.  She held a variety of posts in federal government before returning to California to work for education and win election to the California House and California Senate, and then to Congress.
• Secretary of  Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  41% of Obama cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius worked in the private sector for 12 years, at least nine years as director and lobbyist for the Kansas Association for Justice (then Kansas Trial Lawyers Association).  One might understand why the American Enterprise Institute would not count as “business experience” a career built on reining in insurance companies, as Sebelius did as a lobbyist and then elected Kansas Insurance Commissioner.
• Secretary of  Housing and Urban Development Shaun L.S. Donovan – Private sector experience:  Yes, only 4 years, but significant because it bugs AEI analysts so much.  45% of cabinet with private sector experience, 4.5% without.  With multiple degrees from Harvard University in architecture and public administration, Donovan was Deputy Assistant Secretary of HUD for Multifamily Housing during the Clinton Administration; and he was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).  In the private sector, he worked for the Community Preservation Corporation, a non-profit in New York City, and he worked for a while finding sources to lend to people to buy “affordable housing” in the city, a task perhaps equal to wringing blood from a block of granite.
• Secretary of  Transportation Raymond L. LaHood – Private sector experience:  No (not significant); school teacher at Holy Family School in Peoria, Illinois.  [As a teacher, I'm not sure that teaching should count as government experience, but it's not really private sector stuff, either.  Education isn't as wasteful as for-profit groups.]  45% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Ironically, it is the Republican former Representative who pulls down the private sector experience percentage in the Obama cabinet.
• Secretary of Energy Steven Chu – Private sector experience:  Yes, extremely significant.  50% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Chu worked at Bell Labs, where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work, from 1978 to 1987.  Having won a Nobel for private sector work, I think we can count his private sector experience as important.  Chu also headed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is seeded by a government contract to a university but must operate as a very highly-regulated business.  (I’ll wager Chu is counted as “no private sector experience,” which demonstrates the poverty of methodology of the so-called “J. P. Morgan” study AEI claims.)
• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  55% of cabinet with private sector experience, 9% without.  Duncan earned Academic All-American honors in basketball at Harvard.  His private sector is among the more unusual of any cabinet member’s, and more competitive.  Duncan played professional basketball: “From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia with the Eastside Spectres of the [Australian] National Basketball League, and while there, worked with children who were wards of the state. He also played with the Rhode Island Gulls and tried out for the New Jersey Jammers.”  Since leaving basketball he’s worked in education, about four years in a private company aiming to improve education.
• Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki – Private sector experience:  Yes, but to give AEI and “Morgan” a chance, we won’t count it.  55% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  Shinseki is a retired, four-star general in the army, a former Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  While Shinseki served on the boards of a half-dozen corporations, all of that service was in the six years between his official retirement and his appointment as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
• Secretary of Homeland Security Janet A. Napolitano - Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  59% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  After a brilliant turn in law school at the University of Virginia, and a clerking appointment with a federal judge, Napalitano joined the distinguished Phoenix firm Lewis & Roca, where she practiced privately for nine years before Bill Clinton appointed her U.S. Attorney for Arizona.  AEI probably doesn’t want to count her private sector experience because, among other irritations to them, she was the attorney-advisor to Prof. Anita Hill during her questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the issue of Clarence Thomas’s nomination to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
• White House Chief of Staff Rahm I. Emanuel – Private sector experience:  Yes, significant.  64% of cabinet with private sector experience, 13.6% without.  Emanuel’s major private sector experience is short, but spectacular.  “After serving as an advisor to Bill Clinton, in 1998 Emanuel resigned from his position in the Clinton administration and became an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort), where he worked until 2002. In 1999, he became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office. Emanuel made $16.2 million in his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, according to Congressional disclosures. At Wasserstein Perella, he worked on eight deals, including the acquisition by Commonwealth Edison of Peco Energy and the purchase by GTCR Golder Rauner of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.”  J. P. Morgan and AEI wish that Emanuel had not had such smashing success is such a short time.
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson – Private sector experience:  No, significant.  64% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Despite a brilliant clear cleaning up environmental messes, with EPA and the New Jersey State government, Jackson has negligible private sector experience.  She was a brilliant student, valedictorian in high school and honors graduate in chemical engineering.
• Office of Management & Budget Director Peter R. Orszag – Private sector experience:  Yes, short but significant.  68% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Orszag is the youngest member of the cabinet, but he had a brilliant academic career (Princeton, London School for Economics) and a series of tough assignments in the Clinton Administration.  During the Bush years he founded an economic consulting firm, and sold it, and worked with McKinsey and Company, mostly on health care financing (he’s a member of the National Institute of Medicine in the National Academies of Science).
• U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Ronald Kirk – Private sector experience:  Yes, long and significant.  73% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Son of a postal worker, Ron Kirk used academic achievement to get through law school.  He practiced privately for 13 years, interspersed with a bit of political work, before being appointed Texas Secretary of State in 1994 — the office that most businesses have most of their state regulatory action with.  About a year later he ran for and won election as Mayor of Dallas, considered a major business post in Texas.  Re-elected by a huge margin in 1999, he resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in 2002.  After losing (to John Cornyn), Price took positions with Dallas and then Houston law firms representing big businesses, especially in government arenas.
• U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice – Private sector experience:  Yes.  77% of cabinet with private sector experience, 18% without.  Rice was a consultant with McKinsey and Co., sort of the ne plus ultra of private sectorness, for a while before beginning her climb to U.N Ambassador.
• Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer – Private sector experience:  Yes, but academic.  We won’t count it to make AEI out to be less of a sucker.  77% of cabinet with private sector experience, 23% without significant private sector experience.  Dr. Romer’s chief appointments have been academic, and at a public university, though her education was entirely private.  A specialist in the Great Depression and economic data gathering, she’s highly considered by her colleagues, and is a past-president of the American Economic Association.

All totaled, Obama’s cabinet is one of the certifiably most brainy, most successful and most decorated of any president at any time.  His cabinet brings extensive and extremely successful private sector experience coupled with outstanding and considerable successful experience in government and elective politics.

AEI’s claim that the cabinet lacks private sector experience is astoundingly in error, with 77% of the 22 members showing private sector experience — according to the bizarre chart, putting Obama’s cabinet in the premiere levels of private sector experience.  The chart looks more and more like a hoax that AEI fell sucker to — and so did others (von Mises Institute, Wall Street Blips, League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Volokh Conspiracy, Econlib).

Others bitten by Barnum’s Law:

• Coyote Blog — stepped right into the punch:  “Ever get that feeling like the Obama White House doesn’t have a clue as to what it takes to actually run a business, make investments, hire people, sell a product, etc?”
• Say Anthing

Important update:  Thanks to the comment of Jake, below, I found this article in Forbes, by J. P. Morgan Michael Cembalest, chief investment officer for J. P. Morgan. In notes to the article Cembalest reports on his methodology:

A variety of sources were consulted for this analysis, including the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. In the rankings, I did not include prior private-sector experience for the following positions: Postmaster General; Navy; War; Health, Education & Welfare; Veterans Affairs; and Homeland Security. In the rankings, private-sector experience at a law firm counts for a 33% score, which I think is very generous. My wife strongly suggested raising this to 50%, but I refused.

Cembalest doesn’t reveal much.  Does he include all cabinet-level posts outside the few he excluded?  Why did he exclude Navy and War, but not Defense?  Why would he exclude Homeland Security, with such obvious and extensive hits on private enterprise (think airlines and rail and ships)?  If no Homeland Security, why not exclude Transportation, too?

I’m particularly perturbed by his exclusion of lawyers.  If lawyers are excluded, why not investment bankers?  Lawyers are more directly engages in day-to-day competitive enterprise — and certainly most lawyers have more experience in hiring, firing, and as a commenter notes, “product placement” and advertising, than investment bankers.

In the end, Cembalest doesn’t provide enough details of his methdology, but we can see it’s a quick-and-very-dirty count, not much different from a SWAG.  I’m dying to see how Cembalest dealt with Energy Secretary Chu’s winning a Nobel from his work at Bell Labs, a bastion and symbol of private enterprise power and strength — or rather, how I suspect it was discounted in Cembalest’s counting.  And I wonder how his method dealt with the academic careers of George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, and the law career of James P. Baker III.  [end of update]

Yeah, it’s ironic (hacked e-mails and global warming)

James’s Empty Blog:

It is hard to miss the irony in people eagerly poring through illegally-obtained private email, looking for ethical breaches by the writers! I’m sure we can all imagine the outrage if one of the emails revealed that a scientist had hacked into one of the sceptics’ computers and was reading all their correspondence. So a bit of perspective is called for here.

James Is A Scientist (IANAS), and he has much good stuff to say (read some of the other posts about the hacked e-mails while you’re there) — but you gotta wonder about a blog that follows such a post with this:

Prawns not in their native habitat. Probably Tastimus deliciousus

Tip of the old scrub brush to Stoat.