494 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. civil peace the kind of peace that 00:29:37 exists in the United States in California in Illinois in Chicago and New York where people are living under government where they can settle their differences by recourse to law by request to government rather than to 00:29:49 fighting

      Based on Hobbes' definition of war, the left and the right in America are currently either at war or on the brink, because we are slowly coming to the point at which our differences can't or won't be decided by our recourse to law, which is actively moving against the will of the larger majority of Americans.

  2. Sep 2023
    1. "Surrendering" by Ocean Vuong

      1. He moved into United State when he was age of five. He first came to United State when he started kindergarten. Seven of them live in the apartment one bedroom and bathroom to share the whole. He learned ABC song and alphabet. He knows the ABC that he forgot the letter is M comes before N.

      2. He went to the library since he was on the recess. He was in the library hiding from the bully. The bully just came in the library doing the slight frame and soft voice in front of the kid where he sit. He left the library, he walked to the middle of the schoolyard started calling him the pansy and fairy. He knows the American flag that he recognize on the microphone against the backdrop.

    1. A number of publishers were left high and dry with that announcement and several of us worked together through a broker *during the pandemic* to find a mill in Finland (!) to produce our paper.
    2. the number of *American* printers that can print large books has decreased by two—bankruptcies, both of them. In fact, there are only two firms remaining in the U.S. that both have the presses to print on thin (30# to 40#) paper *and* that can do sewn bindings of books of 1,200 pages or more.
  3. Aug 2023
    1. on Aug. 12, the National Museum of American History is giving the artifact pristine treatment.WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRight"Have You Heard the One . . . ? The Phyllis Diller Gag File" is an exhibition of the beige cabinet in the quiet Albert H. Small Documents Gallery.

      The National Museum of American History debuted Phyllis Diller's gag file on August 12, 2011 in the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery in an exhibition entitled "Have you Hard the One...? The Phyllis Diller Gag File."

      see also: press release https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/national-museum-american-history-showcases-life-and-laughs-phyllis-diller

    1. beautiful cities have six qualities
      • for: beautiful cities - qualities, comparison - American vs European cities
      • paraphrase
        • qualities of a beautiful city
          • orderly, but not homogenous
          • they have visible life
          • they are compact, not sprawling
          • have both orientation and mystery
          • appealing scale with ideal height of 5 stories
    1. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.

    2. Most Americans know that before becoming a politician Reaganwas an actor, but fewer are aware that Reagan’s flagging screencareer was revived by a job with the General Electric Corporation(GE). Reagan hosted the popular television show General ElectricTheater, where each week his voice and face reached into tens ofmillions of homes, promoting didactic stories of individualism andfree enterprise. At the same time, he traveled across the country onbehalf of GE—visiting factories, making speeches at schools, anddoing the dinner circuit in communities where GE had a presence—promoting the corporation’s stridently individualist antiunion andantigovernment vision.

      From a philosophical viewpoint, Reagan grew up in Dixon, Illinois a small town (surrounded by farmland) in North West-ish Illinois roughly on the border of the political borders of what Colin Woodard calls The Midlands and Greater Appalachia. He seems to have been a Midlander for the first half of his life, but obviously had an easy time moving to a more Greater Appalachia viewpoint when working for GE.

  4. Jun 2023
    1. Quarter Sawn Tiger Oak 6 Drawer Card Catalog Vintage American Business Systems

      https://www.ebay.com/itm/256099662210

      American Business Systems Co. at 212 Summer Street, Boston, MA manufactured six drawer wooden card indexes some time circa early 1900s.

  5. May 2023
  6. Apr 2023
    1. A political system, he said, needs people who are fair,open-minded, and think for themselves; it doesn’t want people who aresubservient to authority.

      Is there a better direct quote from Locke for this indirect one?


      Oddly, large portions of the religious right and Republican right are highly subservient to authority while simultaneously espousing the idea of "freedom".

      Apparently the base definition of "freedom" on the right has shifted in large portions of American culture.

  7. Mar 2023
    1. “I Vitelloni,” Federico Fellini’s 1953 film about a group of young men on the brink of adulthood drifting about in a small Italian village, to George Lucas before he made “American Graffiti.”

      Tom Luddy introduced George Lucas to Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni before he made American Graffiti.

    2. As director of special projects for Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope, he produced movies like Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), a complicated film about Yukio Mishima, the eccentric Japanese author who killed himself publicly in 1970 — a passion project that Mr. Schrader has described as “the definition of an unfinanceable project.” Mr. Luddy was its tireless booster and supporter, funding it early on with his American Express card.
    1. Medicine shows became popular after the Civil War when patent medicine salesmen traveled the "kerosene circuit" in rural America. Flourishing until the passage of 1906 Fair Food and Drug Act made them obsolete, medicine shows provided entertainment to attract audiences and then used their intermissions to sell their products.

      This pattern would later be seen in later radio and television when product pitchmen sponsored entertainment in return for commercial time.

      (Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour, "Doctors," February 20, 2008 via http://www.oldhatrecords.com/)

      See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show


      Also related to tent revival shows which featured music and religion as entertainment and socializing.

      Example in music: Neil Diamond's song: Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show

    1. AMS Open Math Notes

      Resources and inspiration for math instruction and learning

      Welcome to AMS Open Math Notes, a repository of freely downloadable mathematical works hosted by the American Mathematical Society as a service to researchers, faculty and students. Open Math Notes includes: - Draft works including course notes, textbooks, and research expositions. These have not been published elsewhere and are subject to revision. - Items previously published in the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics, a refereed journal - Refereed publications at the AMS

      Visitors are encouraged to download and use any of these materials as teaching and research aids, and to send constructive comments and suggestions to the authors.

    1. As ajournalist, historian, novelist, and autobiographer, Adams was con-stantly focused on the American experiment, testing a statementoffered by another figure in Democracy: ‘You Americans believe your-selves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care notfor experience’ (LA 37–8).

      In Chapter 1: American Exceptionalism of Myth America (Basic Books, 2023) historian David A. Bell indicates that Jay Lovestone and Joseph Stalin originated the idea of American Exceptionalism in 1920, but in Democracy (1880, p.72) Henry Adams seems to capture an early precursor of the sentiment:

      "Ah!" exclaimed the baron, with his wickedest leer, "what for is my conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care not for experience. I have lived seventy-five years, and all that time in the midst of corruption. I am corrupt myself, only I do have courage to proclaim it, and you others have it not. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Petersburg, London, all are corrupt; only Washington is pure! Well, I declare to you that in all my experience I have found no society which has had elements of corruption like the United States. The children in the street are corrupt, and know how to cheat me. The cities are all corrupt, and also the towns and the counties and the States' legislatures and the judges. Every where men betray trusts both public and private, steal money, run away with public funds.

      Had a flavor of American Exceptionalism been brewing for decades before Stalin's comment?

    1. Europe invented the practice of turning words around on themselves. You need only look to the treaties between American Indian peoples and various European governments to know that this is true. Draw your strength from who you are.
      • Critique
      • I doubt that European culture invented institutional deception but through colonialism, they were certainly leading practitioners of it
    1. Rank, Mark Robert, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock. Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty. Oxford University Press, 2021.

      Reading as part of Dan Allosso's Book Club

      Mostly finished last week, though I managed to miss the last book club meeting for family reasons, but finished out the last few pages tonight.

      annotation target: url: urn:x-pdf:c3701d1c083b974a888f7eaa4009f11f

  8. Feb 2023
    1. Moststriking, though, was Marcus’ appropriation of Deutsch’s cards when he extracted thoserelating to America, installing them in the reading room of the American JewishArchives where they remain to this day.
    1. It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.

      Filipinos and their way of life were perceived as less people. I think this is why today, Asian-American are more likely to experience discrimination than their European counterpart.

      What is your opinion about this?

  9. Jan 2023
    1. you're a Native American and also president of the National Congress of American Indians

      !- Fawn Sharp : ingienous leader - President off National Congress of American Indians

  10. Nov 2022
    1. The Association Between Rate and Severity of Exacerbations in ChronicObstructive Pulmonary Disease: An Application of a Joint Frailty-Logistic Model

      The Association Between Rate and Severity of Exacerbations in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: An Application of a Joint Frailty-Logistic Model

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    Annotators

    1. primary source uh press books thing

      US History and Primary Source Anthology, volume 1<br /> https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/ushistory1/

  11. Oct 2022
    1. Turner's sectionalism essays are collected in The Significance of Sections in American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933. Turner's sectionalism thesis had almost as much influence among historians as his frontier thesis, but never became widely known to the general public as did the frontier thesis. He argued that different ethnocultural groups had distinct settlement patterns, and this revealed itself in politics, economics and society.

      Was sectionalism discussed or mentioned in Colin Woodard's American Nations (2011) as part of an underlying piece of his thesis about American history? It seems applicable.

    2. His best known publication is his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," the ideas of which formed the frontier thesis. He argued that the moving western frontier exerted a strong influence on American democracy and the American character from the colonial era until 1890.
    1. The danger is in conflating our Christian identity and our national identity. We can be Christian, we can also be American. But to assume that being American means being Christian and that being Christian means holding to a narrow view of what it means to be American is limiting to all of the above.

      Being Christian means performing our commitment to follow Jesus along the Way of Love as our response to God's abundant grace. Being American means performing our commitment to a common life within our nation-state according to our founding and constitutional principles. To excel in our American identity, one need not be Christian. To excel in our Christian identity, one need not be American. Conflating these two identities causes us to miss the mark in performing both.

  12. Sep 2022
    1. Consider another example—education. It is true that in most countries, asin the United States, a higher level of educational attainment is typically as-sociated with a lower risk of economic insecurity. But the penalties associatedwith low levels of educational attainment, and the rewards associated with highlevels of attainment, vary significantly by country. Full-time workers without ahigh school degree in Finland, for instance, report the same earnings as thosewith a high school degree. In the United States, however, these workers ex-perience a 24 percent earnings penalty for not completing high school.23 InNorway, a college degree yields only a 20 percent earnings increase over a highschool degree for full-time workers, versus a much higher 68 percent increase inthe United States.24 The percentage of those with a high school degree earningat or below the poverty threshold is more than 4 times higher in the UnitedStates than in Belgium.25

      The US penalizes those who don't complete high school to a higher degree than other countries and this can tend to lower our economic resiliency.

      American exceptionalism at play?

      Another factor at play with respect to https://hypothes.is/a/2uAmuEENEe2KentYKORSww

    2. Theidealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, withhard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. Consequently, those whofail to get ahead have only themselves to blame according to this argument. Itis within this context that America thinks of itself as a fair and meritocraticsociety in which people get what they deserve in life.

      There is a variety of confounding myths in America which tend to hold us down. These include economic mobility, meritocracy, poverty, and the land of opportunity.

      With respect to the "land of opportunity", does positive press of a small number of cases from an earlier generation outweigh the actual experience of the majority?


      There was a study on The Blitz in London and England in general in World War II which showed that despite high losses in general, enough people knew one or more who'd lost someone or something to the extreme but that the losses weren't debilitating from a loss perspective and generally served to boost overall morale. Higher losses may have been more demoralizing and harmful, but didn't happen. (Find this source: possibly Malcolm Gladwell??)

      Is this sort of psychological effect at play socially and politically in America and thereby confounding our progress?

  13. Aug 2022
    1. A month before the ceremony, the activist organization American Indian Movement had occupied the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee to protest the sustained mistreatment of Native Americans, a standoff that at the time of Littlefeather’s televised appearance at the Oscars was under a U.S. Department of Justice-imposed media blackout.)
  14. Jul 2022
    1. Yet not all of the sciences use (or require) mathematics to the same extent, for example, the lifesciences. There, the descriptive, analytical methods of Aristotle remain important, as does the(somewhat casual) recourse to final causes.

      Is the disappearance of the Aristotelian final cause in modern science part of the reason for the rise of an anti-science perspective for the religious right in 21st century America?

      People would seem to want or need a purpose to underlie their lives or they otherwise seem to be left adrift.

      Why are things the way they are? What are they for?

      Is the question: "why?" really so strong?

    1. 08:58 - Migrant gene DRD4-7R* Allele and correlation with the pursuit of novelty

      DRD4-7R is the specific gene that Peter implicates in migrants who are adventurous enough to come to America. This is associated with the "can do" perspective that has propelled America into a world leader but also drives America reflexively into the future...on autopilot.

    2. 04:04 - American Mania: When More is Not Enough

      Peter's book explores the biological and evolutionary roots of America's culture of exceptionalism.

    1. he distinguishes three dimensions of dependent origination and this is in his commentary on the guardian of malama jamaica carica called clear words he talks about causal dependence that is every phenomenon depends upon causes and 00:16:19 conditions and gives rise to further causes and conditions um myriological dependence that is every phenomenon every composite phenomenon depends upon the parts that uh that it 00:16:31 comprises and every phenomenon is also dependent upon the holes or the systems in which it figures parts depend on holes holes depend on parts and that reciprocal meteorological dependence 00:16:44 characterizes all of reality and third often overlooked but most important is dependence on conceptual imputation that is things depend in order to be represented as the kinds of 00:16:57 things they are on our conceptual resources our affective resources and as john dunn emphasized our purposes in life this third one really means this um 00:17:09 everything that shows up for us in the world the way we carve the world up the way we um the way we experience the world is dependent not just on how the world is but on the conceptual resources 00:17:22 as well as the perceptual resources through which we understand the world and it's worth recognizing that um when we think about this there are a bunch of um contemporary majamakers majamikas we 00:17:34 might point to as well and so paul fireauben who's up there on on the left well really an austrian but he spent much of his life in america um willard van norman kwine um up on the right wilford sellers and paul churchland

      This is a key statement: how we experience the world depends on the perceptual and cognitive lens used to filter the world through.

      Francis Heylighen proposes a nondual system based on causal dependency relationships to serve as the foundation for distributed cognition.(collective intelligence).

      https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbafybeicho2xrqouoq4cvqev3l2p44rapi6vtmngfdt42emek5lyygbp3sy.ipfs.dweb.link%2FNon-dualism%2520-%2520Mind%2520outside%2520Brain%2520%2520a%2520radically%2520non-dualist%2520foundation%2520for%2520distributed%2520cognition.pdf&group=world

  15. Jun 2022
  16. www.bunkhistory.org www.bunkhistory.org
    1. Bunk is a shared home for the web’s most interesting writing and thinking about the American past. Join us to explore the multi-dimensional connections between past and present.
    1. The phrase "now you're coking with gas" was coined by American Gas Association publicist Carroll Everard "Deke" Houlgate. Deke's son indicated that his father "planted it with Bob Hope's writers" and it was ultimately used in one of his radio shows. From there it turned into one of his catchphrases and it was adopted by others including The Jack Benny Program and Maxwell House Coffee Time.

      Incidentally, Houlgate was also a football journalist who devised the first college football rankings methodology that determined the national champions from 1929 to 1958.

      Is this the same Houlgate, or perhaps his son who played for USC Trojans in the 1931 and 1932 Rose Bowl games?

      References: (see also and check...) - A Way With Words co-host Martha Barnette https://soundcloud.com/waywordradio/now-youre-cooking-with-gas

    1. Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

      When talking about "disciplined armies", "defense", and "militias" at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, Patrick Henry explicitly says that the United States is not in danger from European powers:

      Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

    1. Professor Carl Bogus: Carl T. Bogus, “Was Slavery a Factor in the SecondAmendment?” e New York Times, May 24, 2018.

      Professor Carl Bogus: Carl T. Bogus, “Was Slavery a Factor in the Second Amendment?” The New York Times, May 24, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html

    2. Patrick Henry and George Mason: Dave Davies, “Historian Uncovers eRacist Roots of the 2nd Amendment,” NPR, June 2, 2021.

      https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment

      Transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1002107670 Audio: <audio src="">

      <audio controls> <source src="https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2021/06/20210602_fa_01.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"> <br />

      Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio. Here is a link to the audio instead.

      </audio>

    1. When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century—the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on “gangster guns” like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns—the NRA endorsed the law. Karl Frederick and the NRA did not blindly support gun control; indeed, they successfully pushed to have similar prohibitive taxes on handguns stripped from the final bill, arguing that people needed such weapons to protect their homes. Yet the organization stood firmly behind what Frederick called “reasonable, sensible, and fair legislation.”
    2. The very next day, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it.
    3. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters—where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.
    1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/

      I can see why there's so much backlash on this piece.

      It could and should easily have been written without any reference at all to E. O. Wilson and been broadly interesting and true. However given the editorial headline "The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson", the recency of his death, and the photo at the top, it becomes clickbait for something wholly other.

      There is only passing reference to Wilson and any of his work and no citations whatsoever about who he was or why his work was supposedly controversial. Instead the author leans in on the the idea of the biology being the problem instead of the application of biology to early anthropology which dramatically mis-read the biology and misapplied it for the past century and a half to bolster racist ideas and policies.

      The author indicates that we should be better with "citational practices when using or reporting on problematic work", but wholly forgets to apply it to her own writing in this very piece.

      I'm aware that the magazine editors are most likely the ones that chose the headline and the accompanying photo, but there's a failure here in both editorial and writing for this piece to have appeared in Scientific American in a way as to make it more of a hit piece on Wilson just days after his death. Worse, the backlash of the broadly unsupported criticism of Wilson totally washed out the attention that should have been placed on the meat of the actual argument in the final paragraphs.

      Editorial failed massively on all fronts here.


      This article seems to be a clear example of the following:

      Any time one uses the word "problematic" to describe cultural issues, it can't stand alone without some significant context building and clear arguments about exactly what was problematic and precisely why. Otherwise the exercise is a lot of handwaving and puffery that does neither side of an argument or its intended audiences any good.

    1. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202

      Scientific American apparently published an unsupported hit piece on E. O. Wilson just following his death.


      Desperately sad to hear as I've read many of his works and don't recall anything highly questionable either there or in his personal life, even by current political standards.

      SA does seem to have slipped from my perspective and I'm more often reading Quanta instead.

  17. May 2022
    1. By 1860, the American Medical Association sought to end legal abortion. The Comstock Law of 1873 criminalized attaining, producing or publishing information about contraception, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, and how to procure an abortion.
  18. Apr 2022
    1. Hubbard hadn’t even always been opposed to the psychiatric profession. Soon after Dianetics was published he had attempted to secure APA approval for it. In its early years, Scientology had relied on appearing associated with medical psychiatry to bolster its legitimacy.

      L. Ron Hubbard attempted to get the American Psychological Association (APA) to approve his book Dianetics shortly after it was published. Early on Scientology had relied on appearing associated with the medical psychiatry complex to burnish its image.

  19. Mar 2022
    1. This is a moment that we should seize, in all seriousness, in order to take on the two huge existential plagues that face us this morning: the climate crisis, outlined in this new IPCC report, and the fact that we have a madman with nuclear weapons who’s used the revenues from oil and gas to intimidate and terrify the entire world.

      This is the critical observation - everything is interconnected. It is a nexus of problems that requires that we deal with all dimensions of the problem simultaneously.

      Putin is the nexus of so much that is wrong with the world. He is like an octopus that has its arms in multiple crisis of the planet.

      The political polarization of the US, the ascendancy of the puppet government of Trump and the blatant cognitive dissonance of the extreme right who are impervious to facts is reminiscent of the propaganda imposed upon the Russian people themselves for one reason - it was part of Putin's master plan: https://youtu.be/FxgBuhMBXSA The US population has been split by Putin's information warfare system, the same one he uses on the Russian population.

      The fake news programmed by Russian propaganda about the Ukraine war has worked effectively to mislead the Russian populus: https://youtu.be/kELta9MLOzg The same pattern of psychological manipulation has also had the same impact in the belief system of the typical hardcore Trumpist.

  20. Jan 2022
    1. It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

      The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.


      Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.


      Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

  21. Dec 2021
    1. What we’re going to suggest is that American intellectuals – we areusing the term ‘American’ as it was used at the time, to refer toindigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere; and ‘intellectual’to refer to anyone in the habit of arguing about abstract ideas –actually played a role in this conceptual revolution.

      I appreciate the way that they're normalizing the idea of "American intellectuals" and what that really means.

    1. most people trained in our subjects are aware of is the 00:28:22 phenomenon of slavery among non farming populations and actually the classic example is precisely that of the the indigenous societies of the Northwest Coast who are known to have kept slaves 00:28:36 who were actually hereditary slaves in their households which were organized on these highly stratified aristocratic sort of lines what nobody seems to have 00:28:48 been interested up to now is why this practice of keeping slaves seems to sort of fizzle out and stop as you head south into what is now broadly speaking the 00:29:00 area of coastal California

      How many non-agricultural societies practiced slavery?

      Apparently some indigenous societies on the American Northwest Coast did down into coastal California.

  22. Nov 2021
    1. Du Mez told me it’s important to recognize that this “rugged warrior Jesus” is not the only Jesus many evangelicals encounter in their faith community. There is also the “Jesus is my friend” popular in many devotionals, for example. These representations might appear to be contradictory, she told me, but in practice they can be mutually reinforcing. Jesus is a friend, protector, savior—but according to one’s own understanding of what needs to be protected and saved, and not necessarily according to core biblical teachings.

      This seems to be getting at the "personal Jesus" and personal faith that Colin Woodard mentions as well.

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/help-me-find-world-history-textbooks

      Dan Allosso is curious to look at the history of how history is taught.

      The history of teaching history is a fascinating topic and is an interesting way for cultural anthropologists to look at how we look at ourselves as well as to reveal subtle ideas about who we want to become.

      This is particularly interesting with respect to teaching cultural identity and its relationship to nationalism.

      One could look at the history of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War to see how the South continued its cultural split from the North (or in more subtle subsections from Colin Woodard's American Nations thesis) to see how this has played out. This could also be compared to the current culture wars taking place with the rise of nationalism within the American political right and the Southern evangelicals which has come to a fervor with the rise of Donald J. Trump.

      Other examples are the major shifts in nationalism after the "long 19th century" which resulted in World War I and World War II and Germany's national identity post WWII.

    1. On two highly divisive cultural issues — public safety and public education — even voters in this exceedingly progressive city have bluntly told their elected leaders that high-minded rhetoric is not enough.
  23. Oct 2021
  24. Sep 2021
    1. I told them it was the Sabbath day, and desired them to let me rest

      She hadn't practiced a sabbath before, why is she upset about this one?

    2. She didn't even pass through the water like a baptism entails she skirted over it in a raft. It even dictates that "my food did not wet"

    3. stoutest men, and sent them back to hold the English army in play whilst the rest escaped.

      Men who would die for the benefit of the tribe. A war with the English army

    1. “Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord.”

      it seems like she isn't exactly bothered by captivity. Although I understand her urging her not because she's pregnant and due soon. But shouldn't she at least think about running away too if she's captive and unhappy.

    2. chapter of Deuteronomy

      What is the significance to this chapter?

    3. One of the Indians that came from Medfield fight, had brought some plunder, came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket. I was glad of it, and asked him, whether he thought the Indians would let me read? He answered, yes. So I took the Bible,

      They treat captives with more kindness than the Englishmen do. They still let her have access to religious texts.

    4. Then they went and showed me where it was, where I saw the ground was newly digged, and there they told me they had buried it.

      They took the time to bury it upon a hill and to tell her where her baby was buried

    5. my sweet babe like a lamb departed this life on Feb. 18, 1675. It being about six years, and five months old.

      No one should go through the death of a baby. Why is there no distinguishing language about the baby? no possessive descriptions or even a name

    6. Then I took oaken leaves

      Seems like herbal remedies which are common from pagans and Native Americans

    7. and my child’s being so exceeding sick,

      I thought her children died??

    8. One of the Indians got up upon a horse, and they set me up behind him, with my poor sick babe in my lap.

      It seems to be that the once off act of kindness might actually be a pattern

    1. still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning.

      God's mercy and love kept them alive through to the morning

    2. but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up my spirit, that it did not quite fail.

      Why is God with her all of a sudden? I'm sensing a theme of Christianity and praising the Lord.

    3. One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse

      Quite interesting since they are 'barbaric' creatures. Why would they carry her wounded baby on a horse showing kindness to her?

    1. All was gone, my husband gone (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay; and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward), my children gone, my relations and friends gone, our house and home and all our comforts—within door and without—all was gone (except my life), and I knew not but the next moment that might go too.

      Alluding to how the Englishmen killed the Natives and took them slaves as a way of profit.

    2. one-eyed John, and Marlborough’s Praying Indians

      Are these characters to be followed up on?

    3. Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell.

      Shows the disconnect that English people felt at the time and the animistic view of Native Americans that was portrayed.

    4. “What, will you love English men still?”

      Her being in Native American territory somehow denotes her English nature?

    1. “From the culture’s point of view, Adler was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive.”

      This is a painful burn by the writer Alex Beam.

      Perhaps worth modifying for Donald J. Trump?

      From the perspective of the American experiment and the evolution of democracy, Donald J. Trump was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive."

    1. Billionaire business owners deployed lobbyists to make sure Trump’s 2017 tax bill was tailored to their benefit. Confidential IRS records show the windfall that followed.

      @choppa1890 says "will read and get mad about one of these days"

      With respect.....this learned attitude is the leading contributor to the problem with modern America. The quote reflects cognitive dissonance that is dealt with through a weak form of denial. @choppa1890 uses a mentally acceptable task (posting in Hypothesis) and 'avoidance', to resolve the dissonance. @choppa1890 can not allow him/herself to read the article, create knowledge and emotion. It's too much to think about so I will make a note in Hypothesis and move on!

    1. The Uncomfortable Truth is the Difficult and Unpopular Decisions are Now Unavoidable.

      Topic is relevant across a span of global issues. Natural resources are Finite.....period! Timely decisions are critical to insure intelligent use of resources. DENIAL is the enemy and 800lb gorilla in the room. Neoliberisim and social dysfunction feed on any cognitive dissonance and poop it out as "crap". True believers of American Capitalism (yes there is a difference) have become "cult-like" and drink the fluid of the cult to the very end, human consequence is of no concern.

      Point being: Reality is always elusive within a cult controlled (authoritative) mindset. Cult members are weak sheep, incapable of individual logic/reason. Authority can not be challenged. -- Denial, a human defense mechanism has been and is the common denominator in all personal and global conflict. Denial can be traced throughout modern history and rears its ugly head whenever the stakes are high.

  25. Aug 2021
    1. What’s up with African American literacy rates? David L. Horne, PH.D. | 10/3/2013, midnight

      In the world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other quick strike information processes, why is there a definite lack of evidence of a steady upward progression of reading and writing skills among African American contributors?

      Post secondary education statistics continue to demonstrate that far too many African American students who finish high school do so as functional illiterates—that is, they cannot read and write at a basic level requisite for functional participation in modern life. In California, both the California State University system and the University of California system still annually allow (and mainly require) a significant proportion of incoming freshmen to register for developmental English courses—sometimes called “dumbbell” English— in order to assist the students in preparing to take regular-level freshmen college basic education courses. These developmental courses generally do not count toward a student’s graduation but must still be paid for through regular tuition. Both university systems realize this is not a very efficient use of taxpayer dollars, however, the literacy levels of the students coming to them out of high school require this kind of intervention. As of 2009, the Department of Education reported that literacy rates for more than 50 percent of African American children in the fourth grade nationwide was below the basic skills level and far below average; and by the ninth grade nationwide, the situation had gotten worse, with the rate dropping below 44 percent. Yes, there is still an unemployment crisis in the nation’s Black communities, but what is feeding and ensuring the longevity of that crisis is the ballooning illiteracy rate among Black youth and adults. What happened to that post-antebellum slavery zeal that put educational attainment, including reading and writing skills, as the sustained priority for advancement in American society? How did we drop that ball? These are bedeviling questions especially with Sept. 24 labeled National Punctuation Day, and it was accompanied by a broad national reflection on the lack of proper writing skills among modern American youth. Officially, NPD, “is a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.” Giving even a casual glance at regular comments typed into Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook pages, American youth are in deep need, accompanied by deepening denial, of literacy help. And, citing the old chestnut, “when White folks sneeze, Black folks catch the flu,” where there is this dire a problem among America’s youth in general, African American youth are staring at death’s door regarding functional literacy in America. What can be done about it, if anything? Where there is still parenting going on, we need to encourage the love of reading (not just urge our youth to read so-called great books), and we need to encourage African American youth to actually write sentences in letters, notes, homework assignments, etc. We might even spend a little time checking—proof-reading—their material ourselves. African Americans simply cannot afford this self-imposed hump onto already overloaded backs. It’s one thing to still have to fight everyday acts of random racism in our lives. That’s the nature of the beast we deal with. It is another thing altogether though, to handicap ourselves. Suicide has never been our favorite or most popular response to oppression, but we have to call this literacy problem what it is—cultural and political suicide. C’mon ya’ll. Let’s get with it. Forward not backwards. Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.

      DISCLAIMER: The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/or contributing writers are not necessarily those of OurWeekly.

      Source: http://ourweekly.com/news/2013/oct/03/whats-african-american-literacy-rates/

      This article discusses an issue that has dogged that African American community for centuries.

  26. Jul 2021
    1. If we mutually exclusively split America into these four classifications, what would be the proportion of people within each?

      What do the overlaps of these four groups look like with respect to Colin Woodard's eleven American Nations?

    2. The narrative of Free America shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for Smart America. Free trade, deregulation, economic concentration, and balanced budgets became the policy of the Democratic Party.

      The deregulation part has hurt us immensely. Cross reference this with the thesis found in American Amnesia by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.

      Which parts of the Democratic party went along with this? Evidence? More of the deregulation parts seemed to be identified with the Republican party.