Friday, August 17, 2007
Einstein, the physicist adept at visualization
Albert Einstein
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921
Biography
Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879, says nobelprize.org. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich and he began his schooling there at the Luitpold Gymnasium.
Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.
During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.
After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.
At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.
In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.
In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.
After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.
Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.
Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.
Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
John Barry article for Washington Post: "Pittsburgh cabbie has stake in saving La's coastline"
Pittsburgh cabbie has a stake in saving La.'s coast / John Barry
May 12 Washington Post.
John M. Barry is the author of the book Rising Tide, an award-winning
examination of the Miss. flood of 1927.
There has been much debate in the past 20 months over protecting Louisiana from another lethal hurricane, but nearly all of it has been conducted without any real understanding of the geological context. Congress and the Bush administration need to recognize six facts that define the national interest.
Fact 1: The Gulf of Mexico once reached north to Cape Girardeau, Mo. But the Mississippi River carries such an enormous sediment load that, combined with a falling sea level, it deposited enough sediment to create 35,000 square miles of land from Cape Girardeau to the present mouth of the river.
This river-created land includes the entire coast, complete with barrier islands, stretching from Mississippi to Texas. But four human interventions have interfered with this natural process; three of them that benefit the rest of the country have dramatically increased the hurricane threat to the Gulf Coast.
Fact 2: Acres of riverbank at a time used to collapse into the river system providing a main source of sediment. To prevent this and to protect lives and property, engineers stopped such collapses by paving hundreds of miles of the river with riprap and even concrete, beginning more than 1,000 miles upriver — including on the Ohio, Missouri and other tributaries — from New Orleans. Reservoirs for flood protection also impound sediment. These and other actions deprive the Mississippi of 60 to 70 percent of its natural sediment load, starving the coast.
Fact 3: To stop sandbars from blocking shipping at the mouth of the Mississippi, engineers built jetties extending more than two miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. This engineering makes Tulsa, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and other cities into ports with direct access to the ocean, greatly enhancing the nation's economy. The river carries 20 percent of the nation's exports, including 60 percent of its grain exports, and the river at New Orleans is the busiest port in the world. But the jetties prevent any of the sediment remaining in the river from replenishing the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts and barrier islands; instead, the jetties drop the sediment off the continental shelf.
Fact 4: Levees that prevent river flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi interfere with the replenishment of the land locally as well.
Fact 5: Roughly 30 percent of the country's domestic oil and gas production comes from offshore Louisiana, and to service that production the industry created more than 10,000 miles of canals and pipelines through the marsh.
Every inch of those 10,000-plus miles lets saltwater penetrate, and eat away at, the coast. So energy production has enormously accelerated what was a slow degradation, transforming a long-term problem into an immediate crisis. The deprivation of sediment is like moving a block of ice from the freezer to the sink, where it begins to melt; the effect of the canals and pipelines is like attacking that ice with an ice pick, breaking it up.
As a result, 2,100 square miles of coastal land and barrier islands have melted into the Gulf of Mexico. This land once served as a buffer between the ocean and populated areas in Louisiana and part of Mississippi, protecting them during hurricanes. Each land mile over which a hurricane travels absorbs roughly a foot of storm surge.
The nation as a whole gets nearly all the benefits of engineering the river. Louisiana and some of coastal Mississippi get 100 percent of the costs. Eastern New Orleans (including the lower 9th Ward) and St. Bernard Parish — nearly all of which, incidentally, is at or above sea level — exemplify this allocation of costs and benefits. Three man-made shipping canals pass through them, creating almost no jobs there but benefiting commerce throughout the country. Yet nearly all the 175,000 people living there saw their homes flooded not because of any natural vulnerability but because of levee breaks. These levee breaks were along these three man-made shipping canals.
Fact 6: Without action, land loss will continue, and it will increasingly jeopardize populated areas, the port system and energy production. This would be catastrophic for America. Scientists say the problem can be solved, even with rising sea levels, but that we have only a decade to begin addressing it in a serious way or the damage may be irreversible.
Despite all this and President Bush's pledge from New Orleans in September 2005 that "we will do what it takes" to help people rebuild, a draft White House cuts its own recommendation of $2 billion for coastal restoration to $1 billion while calling for an increase in the state's contribution from the usual 35 percent to 50 percent. This turns the idea of the Union on its head. Generating benefits to the nation is what created the problem, and the nation needs to solve it. Put simply: Why should a cab driver in Pittsburgh or Tulsa pay to fix Louisiana's coast? Because he gets a stronger economy and lower energy costs from it, and because his benefits created the problem.
The failure of Congress and the president to act aggressively to repair the coastline at the mouth of the Mississippi River could threaten the economic vitality of the nation. Louisiana, one of the poorest states, can no longer afford to underwrite benefits for the rest of the nation.
May 12 Washington Post.
John M. Barry is the author of the book Rising Tide, an award-winning
examination of the Miss. flood of 1927.
There has been much debate in the past 20 months over protecting Louisiana from another lethal hurricane, but nearly all of it has been conducted without any real understanding of the geological context. Congress and the Bush administration need to recognize six facts that define the national interest.
Fact 1: The Gulf of Mexico once reached north to Cape Girardeau, Mo. But the Mississippi River carries such an enormous sediment load that, combined with a falling sea level, it deposited enough sediment to create 35,000 square miles of land from Cape Girardeau to the present mouth of the river.
This river-created land includes the entire coast, complete with barrier islands, stretching from Mississippi to Texas. But four human interventions have interfered with this natural process; three of them that benefit the rest of the country have dramatically increased the hurricane threat to the Gulf Coast.
Fact 2: Acres of riverbank at a time used to collapse into the river system providing a main source of sediment. To prevent this and to protect lives and property, engineers stopped such collapses by paving hundreds of miles of the river with riprap and even concrete, beginning more than 1,000 miles upriver — including on the Ohio, Missouri and other tributaries — from New Orleans. Reservoirs for flood protection also impound sediment. These and other actions deprive the Mississippi of 60 to 70 percent of its natural sediment load, starving the coast.
Fact 3: To stop sandbars from blocking shipping at the mouth of the Mississippi, engineers built jetties extending more than two miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. This engineering makes Tulsa, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and other cities into ports with direct access to the ocean, greatly enhancing the nation's economy. The river carries 20 percent of the nation's exports, including 60 percent of its grain exports, and the river at New Orleans is the busiest port in the world. But the jetties prevent any of the sediment remaining in the river from replenishing the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts and barrier islands; instead, the jetties drop the sediment off the continental shelf.
Fact 4: Levees that prevent river flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi interfere with the replenishment of the land locally as well.
Fact 5: Roughly 30 percent of the country's domestic oil and gas production comes from offshore Louisiana, and to service that production the industry created more than 10,000 miles of canals and pipelines through the marsh.
Every inch of those 10,000-plus miles lets saltwater penetrate, and eat away at, the coast. So energy production has enormously accelerated what was a slow degradation, transforming a long-term problem into an immediate crisis. The deprivation of sediment is like moving a block of ice from the freezer to the sink, where it begins to melt; the effect of the canals and pipelines is like attacking that ice with an ice pick, breaking it up.
As a result, 2,100 square miles of coastal land and barrier islands have melted into the Gulf of Mexico. This land once served as a buffer between the ocean and populated areas in Louisiana and part of Mississippi, protecting them during hurricanes. Each land mile over which a hurricane travels absorbs roughly a foot of storm surge.
The nation as a whole gets nearly all the benefits of engineering the river. Louisiana and some of coastal Mississippi get 100 percent of the costs. Eastern New Orleans (including the lower 9th Ward) and St. Bernard Parish — nearly all of which, incidentally, is at or above sea level — exemplify this allocation of costs and benefits. Three man-made shipping canals pass through them, creating almost no jobs there but benefiting commerce throughout the country. Yet nearly all the 175,000 people living there saw their homes flooded not because of any natural vulnerability but because of levee breaks. These levee breaks were along these three man-made shipping canals.
Fact 6: Without action, land loss will continue, and it will increasingly jeopardize populated areas, the port system and energy production. This would be catastrophic for America. Scientists say the problem can be solved, even with rising sea levels, but that we have only a decade to begin addressing it in a serious way or the damage may be irreversible.
Despite all this and President Bush's pledge from New Orleans in September 2005 that "we will do what it takes" to help people rebuild, a draft White House cuts its own recommendation of $2 billion for coastal restoration to $1 billion while calling for an increase in the state's contribution from the usual 35 percent to 50 percent. This turns the idea of the Union on its head. Generating benefits to the nation is what created the problem, and the nation needs to solve it. Put simply: Why should a cab driver in Pittsburgh or Tulsa pay to fix Louisiana's coast? Because he gets a stronger economy and lower energy costs from it, and because his benefits created the problem.
The failure of Congress and the president to act aggressively to repair the coastline at the mouth of the Mississippi River could threaten the economic vitality of the nation. Louisiana, one of the poorest states, can no longer afford to underwrite benefits for the rest of the nation.
La coastline notes, Th, Aug 16
John Barry article for Washington Post: "Pittsburgh cabbie has stake in saving La's coast"
Note-taking skills:
* Do not write complete sentences. Write key statements in brief fragments.
* Leave spaces between notes.
* Write down words new to you.
* Use appropriate sketches and symbols.
Allons a Lafayette ("Let's go to Lafayette," in French)
Make an informal sketch map of La and its neighbors.
- Rim of color around borders and along rivers.
- Identify 5 municipalities.
- Why begin a study of World bGeography with little Louisiana?
one answer: Katrina and its aftermath.
The Death Dance of Katrina:
1. African coast.
2. Atlantic
3. Along the equator across the Atlantic.
4. Enters the Caribbean.
5. Moves into the Gulf of Mexico.
6. Builds strength by encicrcling a node of warm water in the gulf.
7. Smashes into the La. coastline as Category 3 storm.
8. Levees do not hold. Why not?
Media discussion:
niche media - specialty sources of news, not in widespread use. Ex, Myspace or PBS or AM Talk Radio.
Americans no longer have a shared national source of news and perspective. The daily Times is no longer read on a near-universal basis.
Note-taking skills:
* Do not write complete sentences. Write key statements in brief fragments.
* Leave spaces between notes.
* Write down words new to you.
* Use appropriate sketches and symbols.
Allons a Lafayette ("Let's go to Lafayette," in French)
Make an informal sketch map of La and its neighbors.
- Rim of color around borders and along rivers.
- Identify 5 municipalities.
- Why begin a study of World bGeography with little Louisiana?
one answer: Katrina and its aftermath.
The Death Dance of Katrina:
1. African coast.
2. Atlantic
3. Along the equator across the Atlantic.
4. Enters the Caribbean.
5. Moves into the Gulf of Mexico.
6. Builds strength by encicrcling a node of warm water in the gulf.
7. Smashes into the La. coastline as Category 3 storm.
8. Levees do not hold. Why not?
Media discussion:
niche media - specialty sources of news, not in widespread use. Ex, Myspace or PBS or AM Talk Radio.
Americans no longer have a shared national source of news and perspective. The daily Times is no longer read on a near-universal basis.
World geography syllabus and working schedule
World Geography syllabus / Robert Trudeau
"Participation is the key."
Semester One
Introduction to Social Studies & CMHS 1 week
Louisiana coastline & New Orleans 1 week
China & Japan: Big changes in East Asia 5 weeks
Vietnam & Thailand: Remembering the Vietnam Conflict 1 week
India & Mohandas Gandhi: Ancient traditions, Modern upheavals 3 weeks
Saudi Arabia & the Persian Gulf: Arab history, Global oil 3 weeks
Israel & the Middle East: Conflict from the Biblical to the Modern 4 weeks
Semester Two
New York City & Los Angeles: Megalopoli 2 weeks
West Africa / Senegal to Angola: Part of America's Roots 3 weeks
Golden Age in Greece: Democracy & Philosophy 3 weeks
Roman Empire & Italy: Technology & Christianity 3 weeks
France: Kings & Cuisine 2 weeks
England: Language & Government 2 weeks
Geography is a social studies regimen in which students take a humanities approach appropriate to a college-oriented high school curriculum. The class integrates
* study of language (especially Greek and Latin roots)
* literature (often through classic films such as Gandhi)
* architecture (students make abbreviated models of buildings such as the Taj Mahal and the Great Mosque at Mecca)
* cuisine (taste this Japanese nori, or cultivated seaweed, and write down 5 sensory words)
* music (ethnic or classical music is played in the classroom daily)
* map study (students can draw and label a map comprising the entire world by year's end), * economy (per capita income, standard of living) and
* history (kings & queens, empires, wars).
Subject-matter units may vary in order and substitutions may occur according to world conditions.
Skills emphasized in geography class comprise the higher thinking modes: analysis, synthesis, evaluation, composition and questioning. The primary theme is that students are encouraged to gather information about a nation / culture and compare it to previously-studied nations.
Analysis: to take apart the elements of a culture:
* land - ex., from the cold Himalayas to bustling Shanghai
* resources - petroleum, alumina, arable land, work ethic
* history - golden eras, wars, colonialization, empire
* arts - architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, clothing
* philosophy - What is the theme of Confucianism? can you identify the difference between Buddhism and Taoism?
* government - authoritarian, socialist, democratic
* economy - free enterprise, government controlled, modified
* ethnic groups - Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Creole
* language - Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese
* religions - the degrees of fervor in Christian, jewish and Muslim communities
Synthesis: combine elements of cultures to offer a theme or thesis.
Ex., a) Write a brief essay showing the similarities in Chinese and American cultures. b) Create an annotated map that shows the influence of Buddhism across several nations in Asia.
Questions which accompany each class activity emphasize interpretation and comparison.
Ex.: if most of the world's poor population cooks over charcoal, what are the indirect stresses on the environment? answer: not only air pollution, but deforestation (charcoal being the product of partially burned trees). Deforestation leads to excessive erosion of topsoil and to an extreme danger: a decline in agricultural production.
Learning styles exploration and communication styles evaluation are the subtext for this social studies class.
* How effective is repetition? How can repetition be made bearable?
* How does art - ex., illustrations - enhance learning? Does color add significant impact to communication?
* Does a hands-on activity (for instance, a puzzle map) enhance retention of material?
* Does a multiple-choice quiz create involvement in a general audience? Is multiple-choice more appealing than a fill-in-the-blanks quiz? Why?
If students both see material on the board, write it down, add an illustration, add color, create a quiz and write an essay on the material do we reach a high level of underdtanding and retention? That is this teacher's idea of a thorough lesson.
Composition engages students in the highest mode of thinking.
Written communication must be
orderly; logic and chronology and thoughtful transitions must be in evidence. Writing must be:
* detailed - examples and documentation make a full-bodied article.
* lively - a snappy title and colorful opening are mandatory.
* credible - "according to" and a source must accompany all fact and even presentations of opinion. Meanwhile, we also avoid plagiarism.
* insightful rather than lengthy - while offering an adequate amount of evidence is important, the highest level of writing demonstrates questioning, offers a thesis and demonstrates leaps of imagination.
Materials
Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas is used in class virtually every day and on every quiz. It comprises demography, topography, political life, and spatial relationships. The RMQRWA offers students opportunities for exploration, memorization and global insight.
Handouts, lectures, visual presentations and activities developed by your teacher from material in the NY Times, Public Broadcasting, National Geographic, World Book and numerous additional sources.
The Class Web Site at http://myschoolonline.com/la/trudeau is designed to help create a partnership in learning between student, teacher and parents. Assignments, activities, notes, announcements and tests are updated at least weekly on the web site. Here you will find opportunities for bonus credit writing assignments and a place to catch up on notes and tests when you are ill or otherwise absent.
Time magazine is one of the world's foremost sources for in-depth social studies material. In a world dominated by news in brief from TV and internet blurbs, the weekly newsmagazine offers greater length, depth and more detailed analysis. Time hires the world's top photographers, writers, editors, designers and critics. Even the advertisements in Time are worthy because they represent the best in commercial endeavor. Times' graphics, maps and art are exemplary. Times' elevated vocabulary provides a rich environment for all students. When a person writes or says "according to Time Magazine ..." he is citing a source respected across the globe.
Guest speakers and field trips offer a first-hand learning opportunity. Students' questions are highly valued during these experiences. Post-activity essays afford us an opportunity to evaluate the experience.
Evaluation
Memorization is exercised by a regular schedule of map tests. Spelling counts, as it does all one's life.
Open Notes Multiple Choice Tests offer a challenge to students' ability to take accurate notes, to organize their notes and to use pertinent resources, such as notes from the class web site and resource books in the classroom. Also measured by Open Notes Tests is the ability to read questions and the ability to use deduction in choosing answers.
Essays
Student growth in communications and thinking skills are challenged in the most stringent way by essay questions. Students are given evidence in handouts and expected to follow essay guidelines.
Projects
Special teamwork assignments such as making Powerpoint presentations are an important part of a varied academic diet.
Independent work
Essays are the primarily recommended form of independent work. Each week I suggest several topics for research and writing. From time to time I may allow students to bring a taste of a foreign cuisine to school. I also encourage audio-visual projects such as video and other photography projects.
Email is my way of extending my care to the 143 students I teach each day. Email may be used for bonus work or regular assignments when needed.
Parents and students' questions are answered efficiently by the use of email.
Benchmarks
Instruction and student achievement will be based on these items, as mandated by the Department of Education:
Solving geographic problems by use of geographic materials.
Organizing material by formulating mental maps.
Determining how location and social, cultural, and economic processes affect the features and significance of regions.
Analyzing the structure and interconnectedness of regions.
Determining the social factors that impact human systems.
Analyzing demographic materials.
Comparing economic systems.
Examining the role of technology in human achievement.
Describing the earth's physical challenges and searching for solutions.
Using concepts such as chronology and conflict to analyze history.
Interpreting primary and secondary sources.
Conducting research in efforts to analyze historic issues.
Analyzing cause and effect relationships.
Analyzing and demonstrating an understanding of nations' changes in the modern era.
Analyzing the origins, central ideas and impact of great religions and philosophies.
Tracing the interconnectedness of peoples through research into national and cultural forces.
Grade level Expectations
Competent use of all sections of the atlas.
Mental mapping.
Comparison of cultures.
Use of graphs and diagrams in communicating geographic material.
Drawing conclusions about locations based on the evidence in maps and graphs.
Analysis of economic forces.
Demonstrate an understanding of demographics.
Inquire into the forces that create war and peace.
Describe the cultural forces that link the world's regions.
**
Teaching philosophy / Robert Trudeau
* Clarity of purpose
When the teacher can instantly and consistently respond to student behavior - recognizing what's not acceptable and what is praiseworthy - then students and parents will give him their respect. Internalizing these standards comes after years of interaction in the classroom.
* Sensitivity to students
When teachers put a priority on their students' human needs, then the instructional program will go well. Students crave warmth and recognition. They want a teacher with excellent manners and insight into student background and their needs.
* Consistency of practice
Punctuality, unflagging attendance and maintenance of themes of instructional activity bring the teacher respect and attention.
* Articulacy
Teachers are constant models for their students. Speaking with grammatical correctness and a rich vocabulary make the classroom a lab for lifetime skills. Writing classroom materials and tests with articulacy is a boon to parents and students.
* Energy
Students respond when teachers love their work and have an energetic approach to academic material. An ideal teacher is fit and vigorous and dramatic.
* Appearance
Professional dress and neatness makes the staff and student body feel secure. Dress is a visual clue to one's purpose at work.
"Participation is the key."
Semester One
Introduction to Social Studies & CMHS 1 week
Louisiana coastline & New Orleans 1 week
China & Japan: Big changes in East Asia 5 weeks
Vietnam & Thailand: Remembering the Vietnam Conflict 1 week
India & Mohandas Gandhi: Ancient traditions, Modern upheavals 3 weeks
Saudi Arabia & the Persian Gulf: Arab history, Global oil 3 weeks
Israel & the Middle East: Conflict from the Biblical to the Modern 4 weeks
Semester Two
New York City & Los Angeles: Megalopoli 2 weeks
West Africa / Senegal to Angola: Part of America's Roots 3 weeks
Golden Age in Greece: Democracy & Philosophy 3 weeks
Roman Empire & Italy: Technology & Christianity 3 weeks
France: Kings & Cuisine 2 weeks
England: Language & Government 2 weeks
Geography is a social studies regimen in which students take a humanities approach appropriate to a college-oriented high school curriculum. The class integrates
* study of language (especially Greek and Latin roots)
* literature (often through classic films such as Gandhi)
* architecture (students make abbreviated models of buildings such as the Taj Mahal and the Great Mosque at Mecca)
* cuisine (taste this Japanese nori, or cultivated seaweed, and write down 5 sensory words)
* music (ethnic or classical music is played in the classroom daily)
* map study (students can draw and label a map comprising the entire world by year's end), * economy (per capita income, standard of living) and
* history (kings & queens, empires, wars).
Subject-matter units may vary in order and substitutions may occur according to world conditions.
Skills emphasized in geography class comprise the higher thinking modes: analysis, synthesis, evaluation, composition and questioning. The primary theme is that students are encouraged to gather information about a nation / culture and compare it to previously-studied nations.
Analysis: to take apart the elements of a culture:
* land - ex., from the cold Himalayas to bustling Shanghai
* resources - petroleum, alumina, arable land, work ethic
* history - golden eras, wars, colonialization, empire
* arts - architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, clothing
* philosophy - What is the theme of Confucianism? can you identify the difference between Buddhism and Taoism?
* government - authoritarian, socialist, democratic
* economy - free enterprise, government controlled, modified
* ethnic groups - Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Creole
* language - Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese
* religions - the degrees of fervor in Christian, jewish and Muslim communities
Synthesis: combine elements of cultures to offer a theme or thesis.
Ex., a) Write a brief essay showing the similarities in Chinese and American cultures. b) Create an annotated map that shows the influence of Buddhism across several nations in Asia.
Questions which accompany each class activity emphasize interpretation and comparison.
Ex.: if most of the world's poor population cooks over charcoal, what are the indirect stresses on the environment? answer: not only air pollution, but deforestation (charcoal being the product of partially burned trees). Deforestation leads to excessive erosion of topsoil and to an extreme danger: a decline in agricultural production.
Learning styles exploration and communication styles evaluation are the subtext for this social studies class.
* How effective is repetition? How can repetition be made bearable?
* How does art - ex., illustrations - enhance learning? Does color add significant impact to communication?
* Does a hands-on activity (for instance, a puzzle map) enhance retention of material?
* Does a multiple-choice quiz create involvement in a general audience? Is multiple-choice more appealing than a fill-in-the-blanks quiz? Why?
If students both see material on the board, write it down, add an illustration, add color, create a quiz and write an essay on the material do we reach a high level of underdtanding and retention? That is this teacher's idea of a thorough lesson.
Composition engages students in the highest mode of thinking.
Written communication must be
orderly; logic and chronology and thoughtful transitions must be in evidence. Writing must be:
* detailed - examples and documentation make a full-bodied article.
* lively - a snappy title and colorful opening are mandatory.
* credible - "according to" and a source must accompany all fact and even presentations of opinion. Meanwhile, we also avoid plagiarism.
* insightful rather than lengthy - while offering an adequate amount of evidence is important, the highest level of writing demonstrates questioning, offers a thesis and demonstrates leaps of imagination.
Materials
Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas is used in class virtually every day and on every quiz. It comprises demography, topography, political life, and spatial relationships. The RMQRWA offers students opportunities for exploration, memorization and global insight.
Handouts, lectures, visual presentations and activities developed by your teacher from material in the NY Times, Public Broadcasting, National Geographic, World Book and numerous additional sources.
The Class Web Site at http://myschoolonline.com/la/trudeau is designed to help create a partnership in learning between student, teacher and parents. Assignments, activities, notes, announcements and tests are updated at least weekly on the web site. Here you will find opportunities for bonus credit writing assignments and a place to catch up on notes and tests when you are ill or otherwise absent.
Time magazine is one of the world's foremost sources for in-depth social studies material. In a world dominated by news in brief from TV and internet blurbs, the weekly newsmagazine offers greater length, depth and more detailed analysis. Time hires the world's top photographers, writers, editors, designers and critics. Even the advertisements in Time are worthy because they represent the best in commercial endeavor. Times' graphics, maps and art are exemplary. Times' elevated vocabulary provides a rich environment for all students. When a person writes or says "according to Time Magazine ..." he is citing a source respected across the globe.
Guest speakers and field trips offer a first-hand learning opportunity. Students' questions are highly valued during these experiences. Post-activity essays afford us an opportunity to evaluate the experience.
Evaluation
Memorization is exercised by a regular schedule of map tests. Spelling counts, as it does all one's life.
Open Notes Multiple Choice Tests offer a challenge to students' ability to take accurate notes, to organize their notes and to use pertinent resources, such as notes from the class web site and resource books in the classroom. Also measured by Open Notes Tests is the ability to read questions and the ability to use deduction in choosing answers.
Essays
Student growth in communications and thinking skills are challenged in the most stringent way by essay questions. Students are given evidence in handouts and expected to follow essay guidelines.
Projects
Special teamwork assignments such as making Powerpoint presentations are an important part of a varied academic diet.
Independent work
Essays are the primarily recommended form of independent work. Each week I suggest several topics for research and writing. From time to time I may allow students to bring a taste of a foreign cuisine to school. I also encourage audio-visual projects such as video and other photography projects.
Email is my way of extending my care to the 143 students I teach each day. Email may be used for bonus work or regular assignments when needed.
Parents and students' questions are answered efficiently by the use of email.
Benchmarks
Instruction and student achievement will be based on these items, as mandated by the Department of Education:
Solving geographic problems by use of geographic materials.
Organizing material by formulating mental maps.
Determining how location and social, cultural, and economic processes affect the features and significance of regions.
Analyzing the structure and interconnectedness of regions.
Determining the social factors that impact human systems.
Analyzing demographic materials.
Comparing economic systems.
Examining the role of technology in human achievement.
Describing the earth's physical challenges and searching for solutions.
Using concepts such as chronology and conflict to analyze history.
Interpreting primary and secondary sources.
Conducting research in efforts to analyze historic issues.
Analyzing cause and effect relationships.
Analyzing and demonstrating an understanding of nations' changes in the modern era.
Analyzing the origins, central ideas and impact of great religions and philosophies.
Tracing the interconnectedness of peoples through research into national and cultural forces.
Grade level Expectations
Competent use of all sections of the atlas.
Mental mapping.
Comparison of cultures.
Use of graphs and diagrams in communicating geographic material.
Drawing conclusions about locations based on the evidence in maps and graphs.
Analysis of economic forces.
Demonstrate an understanding of demographics.
Inquire into the forces that create war and peace.
Describe the cultural forces that link the world's regions.
**
Teaching philosophy / Robert Trudeau
* Clarity of purpose
When the teacher can instantly and consistently respond to student behavior - recognizing what's not acceptable and what is praiseworthy - then students and parents will give him their respect. Internalizing these standards comes after years of interaction in the classroom.
* Sensitivity to students
When teachers put a priority on their students' human needs, then the instructional program will go well. Students crave warmth and recognition. They want a teacher with excellent manners and insight into student background and their needs.
* Consistency of practice
Punctuality, unflagging attendance and maintenance of themes of instructional activity bring the teacher respect and attention.
* Articulacy
Teachers are constant models for their students. Speaking with grammatical correctness and a rich vocabulary make the classroom a lab for lifetime skills. Writing classroom materials and tests with articulacy is a boon to parents and students.
* Energy
Students respond when teachers love their work and have an energetic approach to academic material. An ideal teacher is fit and vigorous and dramatic.
* Appearance
Professional dress and neatness makes the staff and student body feel secure. Dress is a visual clue to one's purpose at work.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
First multiple-choice, open-notes test on Th, Aug 23
Our first test will be next Thur, Aug 23. Please try to give Thursdays special status. In geography class most tests and / or project due dates will be on Thurs.
The material will come from handouts and class notes / web site notes. There will be approximately 15 multiple-choice questions. In the web site archives you should be able to find samples of last year's tests for preparing yourself. There will also be one short essay to be written - for 3 to 5 pts. Short essays are graded on language and logic.
Each week there will be a project that will be introduced and initiated in class. Usually the project will combine written material with a map and other graphics. The value will be 5 to 10 pts and will be completed
at home.
This week's project will be created around a map of Louisiana. Emphasis will be on the Mississippi River and the loss of coastal wetlands.
The material will come from handouts and class notes / web site notes. There will be approximately 15 multiple-choice questions. In the web site archives you should be able to find samples of last year's tests for preparing yourself. There will also be one short essay to be written - for 3 to 5 pts. Short essays are graded on language and logic.
Each week there will be a project that will be introduced and initiated in class. Usually the project will combine written material with a map and other graphics. The value will be 5 to 10 pts and will be completed
at home.
This week's project will be created around a map of Louisiana. Emphasis will be on the Mississippi River and the loss of coastal wetlands.
Presentations: developing a lifetime skill
Over the next 3 classes students will work on the skill of making a brief introductory presentations on their classmates. To be emphasized:
1. spelling of the person's name.
2. clarity in speech.
3. appropriate posture.
4. proper language.
1. spelling of the person's name.
2. clarity in speech.
3. appropriate posture.
4. proper language.
Going to find additional books for school and Just in Time supply
Just In Time (JIT) is an inventory strategy implemented to improve the return on investment of a business by reducing in-process inventory and its associated costs, says Wikipedia.org.
The process is driven by a series of signals, or Kanban, that tell production processes when to make the next part. Kanban are usually 'tickets' but can be simple visual signals, such as the presence or absence of a part on a shelf. When implemented correctly, JIT can lead to dramatic improvements in a manufacturing organization's return on investment, quality, and efficiency.
New stock is ordered when stock drops to the re-order level. This saves warehouse space and costs. However, one drawback of the JIT system is that the re-order level is determined by historical demand. If demand rises above the historical average demand, the firm will deplete inventory faster than usual and cause customer service issues.
Thus store clerks do not "Go to the back" to replenish stock today. Closets and warehouses are kept empty by businesses trying to be competitive. When an item is depleted retailers will fill customers needs by saying "We will order it. Should arrive in 5 to 7 days."
In other words, beware the assumption that a store will carry plenty of copies of the Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas. Call before you go, please.
The process is driven by a series of signals, or Kanban, that tell production processes when to make the next part. Kanban are usually 'tickets' but can be simple visual signals, such as the presence or absence of a part on a shelf. When implemented correctly, JIT can lead to dramatic improvements in a manufacturing organization's return on investment, quality, and efficiency.
New stock is ordered when stock drops to the re-order level. This saves warehouse space and costs. However, one drawback of the JIT system is that the re-order level is determined by historical demand. If demand rises above the historical average demand, the firm will deplete inventory faster than usual and cause customer service issues.
Thus store clerks do not "Go to the back" to replenish stock today. Closets and warehouses are kept empty by businesses trying to be competitive. When an item is depleted retailers will fill customers needs by saying "We will order it. Should arrive in 5 to 7 days."
In other words, beware the assumption that a store will carry plenty of copies of the Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas. Call before you go, please.
Demographics: study of trends in the population
On the first day in geography class the term was 'demographics." We looked at a profile of Trudeau's classes' middle school background. A little over 50% of students said they were from Caddo Middle. After that school, the distribution was widespread. A dozen schools are represented. Sadly, only one student in some 140 said they'd gone to a school outside of North La.
Detecting patterns, or trends, in the statistics is the more difficult task. One interpretation of the effect of a wide number of schools represented in the first-year group is to assume most students are looking for new friends.
The lack of regional diversity - almost no out of state students - is evidence of stagnation, said Trudeau. Indeed, the Times recently reminded the public that Shreveport's population is shrinking.
Demographics refers to selected population characteristics, says Wikipedia.org, as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research.
Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location.
Demographic trends describe the changes in demographics in a population over time. For example, the average age of a population may increase.
Asking students whether they had a Myspace page or Facebook page (or both) produced one type of profile of student internet usage. Some 80% of students responded that they are active on one of the popular sites. Perhaps 15% said they were active on both sites.
A profile of the current generation as cited by Wikipedia says:
Generation Y cohort, also called N Generation (born from 1984 to 2001)
* Memorable events: rise of the internet, September 11 attacks, cultural diversity, 2 wars in Iraq.
* Key characteristics: quest for physical security and safety, patriotism, heightened fears, acceptance of change, technically savvy, environmental issues.
From the Greek de·mos (dē'mŏs') n.
1. The common people; the populace.
2. The common people of an ancient Greek state.
graphy: writing
Detecting patterns, or trends, in the statistics is the more difficult task. One interpretation of the effect of a wide number of schools represented in the first-year group is to assume most students are looking for new friends.
The lack of regional diversity - almost no out of state students - is evidence of stagnation, said Trudeau. Indeed, the Times recently reminded the public that Shreveport's population is shrinking.
Demographics refers to selected population characteristics, says Wikipedia.org, as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research.
Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location.
Demographic trends describe the changes in demographics in a population over time. For example, the average age of a population may increase.
Asking students whether they had a Myspace page or Facebook page (or both) produced one type of profile of student internet usage. Some 80% of students responded that they are active on one of the popular sites. Perhaps 15% said they were active on both sites.
A profile of the current generation as cited by Wikipedia says:
Generation Y cohort, also called N Generation (born from 1984 to 2001)
* Memorable events: rise of the internet, September 11 attacks, cultural diversity, 2 wars in Iraq.
* Key characteristics: quest for physical security and safety, patriotism, heightened fears, acceptance of change, technically savvy, environmental issues.
From the Greek de·mos (dē'mŏs') n.
1. The common people; the populace.
2. The common people of an ancient Greek state.
graphy: writing
Monday, August 13, 2007
Welcome to Magnet!
Most of my students are first-years and are ambitious about college and careers. Today, 14 year-old students are aware that the first day at high school is like reporting to work. You don't get an immediate salary; the payoff comes in the summers when you apply for jobs, camps and internships. The biggest payoff comes at the end of 4 years. Graduation will bring serious scholarship money to many of you.
One of your keys to success in testing and general academics will be methods developed in your social studies class. We will work on the communications skills needed in the fast-paced and challenging world you will hit in about 2015.
One of my tasks is to make the learning as much fun as it can be.
The skills? Among them are -
- accuracy and comprehension in reading.
- fluency in essay writing.
- organized approach to notes and projects.
- test-taking skills.
- digital presentations.
- ethics and manners.
We will build a community of scholars. It's cool to be intelligent and responsive at Cmhs. You're going to like that factor. It's cool not to stick with a clique at Magnet. Our students have a history of being friends with a wide cross-section of classmates. You're about to find a large pool of students who are looking for new friends. What could be finer?
One of your keys to success in testing and general academics will be methods developed in your social studies class. We will work on the communications skills needed in the fast-paced and challenging world you will hit in about 2015.
One of my tasks is to make the learning as much fun as it can be.
The skills? Among them are -
- accuracy and comprehension in reading.
- fluency in essay writing.
- organized approach to notes and projects.
- test-taking skills.
- digital presentations.
- ethics and manners.
We will build a community of scholars. It's cool to be intelligent and responsive at Cmhs. You're going to like that factor. It's cool not to stick with a clique at Magnet. Our students have a history of being friends with a wide cross-section of classmates. You're about to find a large pool of students who are looking for new friends. What could be finer?
Friday, August 10, 2007
Time Magazine's overview on New Orleans, katrina and the future: "The Threatening Storm" by Michael Grunewald
This is a 3900 word article from Time magazine re New Orleans, Katrina and the future. It is appropriate for geography class in many ways. While it may take a while to work through it, it will be the first unit in our class. There will be quizzes and hands-on projects to accompany the reading. There will be a classroom set of articles for in-class work.
Thursday, Aug. 02, 2007
The Threatening Storm
By Michael Grunwald
The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.
They should. Two years after Katrina, the effort to protect coastal Louisiana from storms and restore its vanishing wetlands has become one of the biggest government extravaganzas since the moon mission--and the Army Corps is running the show, with more money and power than ever. Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakes--and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you'll love what's coming next.
Before Katrina, the Corps was spending more in Louisiana than in any other state, but much of it was going to wasteful and destructive pork instead of protection for New Orleans; one Corps project actually intensified Katrina's surge. After Katrina, a series of investigations ripped the Corps for building flimsy floodwalls in soggy soils, based on wildly flawed analyses--and shoddy engineering was only one way the Corps betrayed New Orleans. But while FEMA director Michael Brown's resignation made front-page news, Corps commander Carl Strock's resignation hardly made the papers. By the time Strock admitted his agency's "catastrophic failure" eight months after the storm, the U.S. had moved on.
As the disaster's Aug. 29 anniversary approaches, there will be plenty of talk about the future of New Orleans---how to rebuild; bring home the diaspora; and deal with crises like housing, crime and education. But in the long run, recovery plans won't matter much if investors, insurers and homesick evacuees can't trust the Corps to prevent the city from drowning again. "Katrina wasn't even close to the Big One," says Louisiana State University (LSU) hurricane researcher Ivor van Heerden, author of the Katrina memoir The Storm. "We better start getting ready."
Today, Corps leaders are rebuilding New Orleans levees, but they say it will still take four more years and billions of dollars more just to protect the city from a 100-year storm, the protection they were required to provide before Katrina. That's still paltry compared with Amsterdam's 10,000-year-storm protection. But Corps officials have also committed to restoring the surge-softening marshes, cypress swamps and barrier islands that are disappearing at a rate of a football field nearly every half-hour. They say they now understand that the survival of New Orleans depends on a sustainable coast. "This is not the Corps of old," says Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the agency's Task Force Hope. "The world has changed, and the Corps is changing too."
But for all the talk about restoring wetlands, almost every dime of the $7 billion the Corps has received since Katrina is going to traditional engineering: huge structures designed to control rather than preserve nature. And its latest plan seeks to extend those structures along the entire coast, calling for such massive levees across so much of the state that scientists call it the Great Wall of Louisiana. The Corps says it's just an idea, but Congress is about to authorize the first stretch of the wall--a $900 million, 72-mile (116 km) levee for isolated bayou towns like Chauvin, Dulac and Montegut. "Nothing has changed," says G. Edward Dickey, a former Corps chief of planning. "It's the same engineering mentality, except now they'll build the levees even bigger."
Bigger levees aren't all bad. New Orleans desperately needs them; one local slogan is, "Make Levees, Not War." But New Orleans needs its eroding wetlands just as desperately; another local slogan is, "Fix the Coast, or We Are Toast!" To prevent another disaster, the construction addicts of the Corps, their enablers in Congress and the U.S.'s cockamamie approach to water resources will all have to change. The Great Wall concept sounds a lot like the mistakes of the past.
KILLING THE COAST
NEW ORLEANS WASN'T ALWAYS A CITY IN A bowl. The French founded it in 1718 on high ground along the Mississippi, a "natural levee" of sediment deposited by the river. That's why tourists in the French Quarter stayed dry during Katrina. And that's how all of south Louisiana was built--by the Mississippi River mutinying its banks and rambling around its floodplain like an unruly teenager, dropping mud around its delta and creating roughly 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of wetlands between New Orleans and the Gulf. So while the French built an earthen levee 1 mile long and 3 ft. high (1.6 km long, 1 m high) to block the river's annual tantrums, they didn't bother trying to block the occasional hurricanes that swept up the Gulf. "They didn't need hurricane levees," says Kerry St. Pe, a marine biologist whose ancestors arrived in 1760. "They had wetlands to protect them." New Orleans wasn't on the coast, and hurricanes wilt over land.
Now the Gulf has advanced some 20 miles (32 km) inland, thanks in large part to the Army Corps. The Corps started as a Revolutionary War regiment, fortifying Bunker Hill, but it evolved into an all-purpose engineering unit, eventually overseeing local flood control on the Mississippi. The Corps ordered communities to imprison the river in a narrow channel with a strict "levees only" policy, rejecting calls to give the river room to spread out. So levees rose, and the Corps repeatedly declared the river floodproof. But the constrained river also rose, and its jailbreaks repeatedly proved the Corps wrong. In the epic flood of 1927, crevasses shredded the entire valley and nearly destroyed New Orleans.
Congress rewarded this failure by allowing the Corps to seize control of the entire river and its tributaries, an unprecedented Big Government project that foreshadowed the New Deal and established the Corps as the U.S.'s manipulator of water and manhandler of nature. It built dams, floodways, revetments and pumped-up levees throughout the Mississippi basin, caging the beast in its channel, safeguarding riverfront cities, creating a reliable web of liquid highways. But by walling off the river, trapping its sediments behind giant dams and armoring its erosive banks with concrete, the Corps inadvertently choked off the land-building process. The straitjacketed river now carries less than half its original sediment load down to Louisiana. So there's little new land-building material to offset the natural erosion of the coast, much less the unnatural rising of the sea fueled by global warming.
The result is that New Orleans is sinking, and about 30% of the coast's wetlands have slipped into the Gulf, jutting Louisiana's chin even further into the path of Mother Nature's fist, endangering the U.S.'s largest offshore oil and gas fields, a lucrative seafood industry, a busy network of ports and about 2 million people. If Mexico had seized all that land, we'd be at war. LSU hydraulic engineer Hassan Mashriqui says just 100 yds. (91 m) of cypress trees can reduce wave energy 95%; he has seen a similar phenomenon with mangroves in his native Bangladesh. Katrina and then Hurricane Rita confirmed that marshes knock down surges as well. "Basically, we found that none of the levees that failed were protected by wetlands or trees," Mashriqui says.
Oil and gas canals have accelerated the land losses. But so have Corps navigation canals, especially the notorious Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a shipping shortcut to the Port of New Orleans that was a larger dirt-moving project than the Panama Canal when it opened in 1965. The canal never carried many ships, but it has carried plenty of saltwater into freshwater marshes and cypress forests, killing nearly 100 sq. mi. (259 sq km) of wetlands. Shortly before Katrina, Mashriqui called it a "critical and fundamental flaw" in New Orleans' defenses; after Katrina, his modeling found that the outlet boosted Katrina's surge 2 ft. (0.6 m) and increased its velocity 10-fold, overwhelming St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. "This was a disaster created by the Corps," Mashriqui says.
A TRAGEDY OF PRIORITIES
NEW ORLEANS STILL MIGHT HAVE FENDED off Katrina if its levees hadn't played matador defense. After Hurricane Betsy pummeled New Orleans in 1965, Congress assigned the Corps to protect the city from a 100-year storm. The agency's first mistake was calculating that 100-year event as a modest Category 3 hurricane, even though Betsy had been a 4, and the National Weather Service later proposed a more severe 4. The Corps then made such egregious engineering errors that it wasn't even ready for a smaller storm. For example, its levees sagged as much as 5 ft. (1.5 m) lower than their design because the Corps miscalculated sea level and then failed to adjust for subsidence. Some were built in soils with the stability of oatmeal. "These were inexcusable, lethal mistakes," says University of California, Berkeley, engineering professor Robert Bea, who led a post-Katrina investigation for the National Science Foundation. The Corps also built most of its levees around swampland, a conscious effort to promote the development of low-lying subdivisions like New Orleans East. That no longer seemed like such a good idea after New Orleans East went underwater during Katrina. "That should be the first lesson: build levees around people, not around wetlands," says Paul Harrison of Environmental Defense.
The basic problem is that protecting New Orleans from deadly storms was never anyone's top priority. That's why the city's main hurricane project was 37 years behind schedule when Katrina hit. Louisiana's congressional delegation steered Corps funds toward boondoggles that had nothing to do with flood protection, like a $2 billion effort to channelize the Red River for barges that never materialized. Stingy local officials actually helped scuttle a Corps plan to build pumps and floodgates along Lake Pontchartrain, a plan that could have prevented much of Katrina's flooding. "We can beat ourselves up about the past--or we can use the past to do business differently in the future," says Corps Colonel Jeffrey Bedey, who is now overseeing construction of, yes, huge pumps and floodgates along Lake Pontchartrain. "I don't just mean we the Corps. I mean we the country."
Corps leaders often say their projects simply reflect the will of the nation; when the U.S. wanted them to ransack the landscape with dams and dredges, they saluted and obeyed. But it's also true that the Corps helps shape that will. In recent years the Government Accountability Office, the National Academies of Science and the Pentagon inspector general have documented the agency's bias toward approving projects that keep its 35,000 employees busy and its congressional paymasters happy. In 2000 its leaders were caught cooking an economic analysis to justify a $1 billion upper Mississippi River lock project and launching a secret Program Growth Initiative to lard their budget with make-work. In New Orleans, the Corps endorsed a $750 million lock on the Industrial Canal even though its economists considered it a waste of money; the agency justified it by citing increasing use, even though use was decreasing.
Pam Dashiell, a community activist in the Lower Ninth Ward, fought for years against the Gulf Outlet and the Industrial Canal lock, lobbying Corps officials and Louisiana politicians to focus on safety instead. But both projects were on the wish list of the port, the city's most powerful interest. Dashiell remembers the hostility of Congressmen like Democrat William Jefferson, now indicted on corruption charges, and Republican David Vitter, now embroiled in a prostitution scandal. "They said I was an obstructionist," she says. "I was like, 'Where are your priorities?'" Her working-class Holy Cross neighborhood had one of the highest elevations in New Orleans, but it was nearly wiped out by the surge that blasted up the Gulf Outlet and tore through floodwalls along the Industrial Canal--just a stone's throw from the white-elephant lock project.
For the U.S.'s water-resources system, these haphazard priorities are a feature, not a bug. The Corps is funded almost exclusively by earmarks, individual slices of pork requested by individual Congressmen. Since F.D.R., Presidents have routinely tried to rein in the agency, with little success. After the Program Growth scandal, the Clinton Administration issued a gentle reminder that Corps generals are supposed to report to their superiors in the Pentagon chain of command but speedily retracted it following a venomous outcry from their real superiors on Capitol Hill. President Bush keeps proposing zero funding for most of the Corps projects that taxpayer and environmental groups hate, but Congress continues to fund them anyway.
So the U.S. has no water-resources policy, just a ready-to-build water-resources agency whose agenda is dictated by an annual funding free-for-all among its 535 bosses. It's a classic example of Washington's iron triangle: commercial interests lobby the Corps and their Congressmen for projects that supply the Corps with work and political cover and help the Congressmen steer jobs and money to constituents and contributors. "It's a sinister system," says American Water Resources Association president Gerry Galloway, a former Army brigadier general who is now a visiting scholar at the Corps. "Water is a national-security issue, but we treat it like the Wild West. The big guns get the money."
Katrina didn't change that system. Louisiana Senators Vitter and Mary Landrieu promptly proposed a bloated quarter-trillion-dollar Louisiana reconstruction bill, drafted by lobbyists for oil, shipping and other corporate interests. The request included $40 billion for the Corps--10 times the agency's budget for the rest of the nation--including nonreconstruction projects like the Industrial Canal lock and a New Iberia port deepening that had flunked the Corps' cost-benefit tests.
It also included pre-Katrina coastal levee schemes, with names like Morganza-to-the-Gulf and Donaldsonville-to-the-Gulf to suggest their grandiose sweep. The bill stalled after it was widely mocked as legislative looting, but it sent the message that pre-Katrina priorities were still in effect. Vitter kept pushing a measure to help timber companies harvest cypress swamps. Landrieu tucked language into emergency bills ordering the Corps to redo its New Iberia analysis and fast-tracking the Industrial Canal lock. "Katrina was just a perfect excuse to pull the old pork off the shelf in the name of otherwise-we-drown," says Tulane law professor Oliver Houck, the sage of Louisiana environmentalism. "And away we go: another Louisiana hayride."
THE PATH FORWARD
THE HAYRIDE HAS NOT YET LEFT THE BARN. Since Katrina, the Corps has focused on repairing and improving its New Orleans defenses: rebuilding or strengthening 220 miles of the city's 350 miles of levees (about 350 km of New Orleans' 560-km levee system), installing gigantic pumps and gates along the lake and releasing block-by-block maps to publicize lingering flood risks. Some engineers believe the new levees are still too short and weak--"They're a frigging disgrace," U.C. Berkeley's Bea says--and the new pumps repeatedly malfunctioned during testing. But the Corps is about to unveil its plan for 100-year protection, with a rumored price tag of $15 billion, and the agency says that by 2011 the city will be safe from "severe storms," though not from storms as severe as Katrina. The Corps has even proposed to close the Gulf Outlet, a stunning turnaround after 40 years. "We're being much, much more conservative," says Thomas Podany, a Corps manager in New Orleans.
The real controversies involve a separate study of Category 5 protection and restoration for the entire Louisiana coast. The initial plans floated by the Corps and its state partners proposed a Maginot Line of towering new levees that evoke the "levees only" policy that failed on the Mississippi River, this time seeking to confine the Gulf. Water needs to go somewhere, and the agency's own modeling suggested that Donaldsonville-to-the-Gulf would not only cut off vast swaths of wetlands but also double storm surges in some areas by piling up water and concentrating its fury. "They're talking about chopping an estuary in half," says John Lopez, a former Corps geologist who is now the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's director of coastal sustainability. "Even for the Corps, that's extreme."
Morganza-to-the-Gulf is less extreme but imminent; it's part of a $20 billion national package of Corps projects nearing congressional approval. The Corps has proposed to use "leaky levees" to allow tidal exchange, but many scientists predict the structures will still wall off marshes, providing a false sense of security to vulnerable towns while increasing their vulnerability. LSU's Van Heerden calls it "absolutely screwy, the exact opposite of what we need." Many scientists argue that it's dangerous and unrealistic to commit billions of dollars to protect middle-of-nowhere fishing towns, when the Corps has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects, and cities like New York and Miami are largely exposed to the sea. They want the Corps to focus on fixing the coast and protecting denser communities while helping families in small coastal towns elevate homes or move to higher ground. "I'm afraid that once we say yes, we're giving clearance to levees all across the state," says LSU ecologist Robert Twilley, who's leading Louisiana's science-review team. "My great fear is that we're going to cut off the coast with barriers, just like we did to the river. I'd hate for that to be my legacy."
Even Morganza's most ardent defenders say coastal levees can have dire coastal consequences. But they don't want to do nothing for people in harm's way. "I sit up at night and ask myself, Why the hell do you want to spend $1 billion on another levee?" says Jerome Zeringue, a biologist who runs the local levee district. "But if we don't protect Dulac, there won't be a Dulac."
In Shrimpers Row in tiny Dulac, a sign says WATER ON ROAD AHEAD--not a flashing sign, a permanent sign. Ivy Pierre has fished these bayous since he was a kid. He says the biggest change over his 78 years is that he walks up a ladder instead of down a ladder to climb into his boat. "We're sinking!" he says. Katrina was the fifth time his house has flooded, but home is a powerful place. "They call it Dulac," he says with a grin, "because we Du what we Lac!"
Dulac is ground zero in an age-old coastal debate: Defend or retreat? It's worth noting that the people of Dulac didn't move into harm's way. Harm moved into their way when the coast collapsed around them. But levees can create perverse incentives; Pierre wanted to elevate his house until he heard the Feds might protect it for him. Pierre also understands that Dulac might be doomed, or at least a bit remote for American taxpayers to protect for more than $10 million a mile, and he might be willing to move to higher ground for the right offer. "Retreat is not an American thing," Houck says. "We need a better word for it, because the concept is inexorable."
Corps managers say they're open to non-structural approaches to reducing flood risk. They also say they might adjust their levee paths to avoid damaging the coast. But expectations are hardening. "Morganza is considered egregious in the scientific community, but there's not a lot of enthusiasm down there for changing the alignment," says Randy Hanchey, who left the Corps after 37 years to oversee coastal projects for Louisiana. "The politics are very tricky."
Levees are still seen as instant local relief, even though Morganza is supposed to be a 16-year project and would probably take much longer. Restoration is often cast as a more general solution, even though scientists expect the Gulf to advance to the New Orleans suburbs within a decade. So political pressure and engineering instincts tend to favor a futile effort to wall ourselves off from nature. But Katrina and Rita wiped out 217 sq. mi. (562 sq km) of wetlands in a single month. And even Bush has acknowledged that without the coast, Louisiana is toast.
The good news is that scientists believe they know how to save it. They want the Corps to let go of the river in strategic areas so it can get back to work building land, even if that requires rearranging navigation at the mouth of the Mississippi. They want to fill in oil and gas canals, constrict the Gulf Outlet and start pumping sediment back into ridges and barrier islands. The Corps developed $14 billion worth of Louisiana restoration plans before Katrina, but Bush scaled them back to $2 billion. Now the scientists want to think even bigger about the entire ecosystem, even the sediments trapped behind dams 1,000 miles upstream (about 1,600 km). And they don't want to have to think about new to-the-Gulfs schemes that could further degrade the coast.
Can the system adapt? The Corps has announced "12 actions for change," but it's hard to find outsiders who believe that it has moved beyond its "teach Mother Nature a lesson" roots. It's still not a Corps of ecologists. And its projects are still a popular form of political swag for its enablers on Capitol Hill. The $20 billion Corps package also includes some modest reforms that would require more review of the agency's projects and mitigation of their environmental damage. But the Senate overwhelmingly rejected an effort to require the prioritization of Corps projects according to national need. And on Wednesday, the Bush Administration threatened to veto the "unaffordable" bill. Lieut. General Robert Van Antwerp, the new Corps commander, would like to see an independent commission recommending water projects outside the political process, like the one that advises military-base closures. But if New Orleans has to wait for an independent commission, it's probably time to invest in scuba gear. "We've got to break the cycle," Twilley says. "We've got to stop the political hacking. If we really want to go to the moon, we ought to go."
The scientists make the task sound simple: build New Orleans 500-year protection and restore its natural protection. Have the courage to cause inconvenience and economic harm to some in the name of protecting all. After all, Katrina was harmful too. Moving 30 million tons of debris was pretty inconvenient. And the next Katrina is a question of when, not if.
Since Katrina, New Orleans has lost more than one-third of its population, and only two of St. Bernard Parish's 26 child-care centers have reopened. In the Lower Ninth Ward, floodwalls have been rebuilt and reinforced, but behind them stand blocks full of overgrown lots, where the remains of a gas meter or front step here or there provide the only evidence of the houses and lives washed away. "I look at this, and I think of the shortsighted people who crippled a great city," Dashiell says. She knows that city needs better hospitals and more jobs. But first, better levees and more wetlands. Otherwise, it's going to need an obituary.
Thursday, Aug. 02, 2007
The Threatening Storm
By Michael Grunwald
The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.
They should. Two years after Katrina, the effort to protect coastal Louisiana from storms and restore its vanishing wetlands has become one of the biggest government extravaganzas since the moon mission--and the Army Corps is running the show, with more money and power than ever. Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakes--and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you'll love what's coming next.
Before Katrina, the Corps was spending more in Louisiana than in any other state, but much of it was going to wasteful and destructive pork instead of protection for New Orleans; one Corps project actually intensified Katrina's surge. After Katrina, a series of investigations ripped the Corps for building flimsy floodwalls in soggy soils, based on wildly flawed analyses--and shoddy engineering was only one way the Corps betrayed New Orleans. But while FEMA director Michael Brown's resignation made front-page news, Corps commander Carl Strock's resignation hardly made the papers. By the time Strock admitted his agency's "catastrophic failure" eight months after the storm, the U.S. had moved on.
As the disaster's Aug. 29 anniversary approaches, there will be plenty of talk about the future of New Orleans---how to rebuild; bring home the diaspora; and deal with crises like housing, crime and education. But in the long run, recovery plans won't matter much if investors, insurers and homesick evacuees can't trust the Corps to prevent the city from drowning again. "Katrina wasn't even close to the Big One," says Louisiana State University (LSU) hurricane researcher Ivor van Heerden, author of the Katrina memoir The Storm. "We better start getting ready."
Today, Corps leaders are rebuilding New Orleans levees, but they say it will still take four more years and billions of dollars more just to protect the city from a 100-year storm, the protection they were required to provide before Katrina. That's still paltry compared with Amsterdam's 10,000-year-storm protection. But Corps officials have also committed to restoring the surge-softening marshes, cypress swamps and barrier islands that are disappearing at a rate of a football field nearly every half-hour. They say they now understand that the survival of New Orleans depends on a sustainable coast. "This is not the Corps of old," says Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the agency's Task Force Hope. "The world has changed, and the Corps is changing too."
But for all the talk about restoring wetlands, almost every dime of the $7 billion the Corps has received since Katrina is going to traditional engineering: huge structures designed to control rather than preserve nature. And its latest plan seeks to extend those structures along the entire coast, calling for such massive levees across so much of the state that scientists call it the Great Wall of Louisiana. The Corps says it's just an idea, but Congress is about to authorize the first stretch of the wall--a $900 million, 72-mile (116 km) levee for isolated bayou towns like Chauvin, Dulac and Montegut. "Nothing has changed," says G. Edward Dickey, a former Corps chief of planning. "It's the same engineering mentality, except now they'll build the levees even bigger."
Bigger levees aren't all bad. New Orleans desperately needs them; one local slogan is, "Make Levees, Not War." But New Orleans needs its eroding wetlands just as desperately; another local slogan is, "Fix the Coast, or We Are Toast!" To prevent another disaster, the construction addicts of the Corps, their enablers in Congress and the U.S.'s cockamamie approach to water resources will all have to change. The Great Wall concept sounds a lot like the mistakes of the past.
KILLING THE COAST
NEW ORLEANS WASN'T ALWAYS A CITY IN A bowl. The French founded it in 1718 on high ground along the Mississippi, a "natural levee" of sediment deposited by the river. That's why tourists in the French Quarter stayed dry during Katrina. And that's how all of south Louisiana was built--by the Mississippi River mutinying its banks and rambling around its floodplain like an unruly teenager, dropping mud around its delta and creating roughly 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of wetlands between New Orleans and the Gulf. So while the French built an earthen levee 1 mile long and 3 ft. high (1.6 km long, 1 m high) to block the river's annual tantrums, they didn't bother trying to block the occasional hurricanes that swept up the Gulf. "They didn't need hurricane levees," says Kerry St. Pe, a marine biologist whose ancestors arrived in 1760. "They had wetlands to protect them." New Orleans wasn't on the coast, and hurricanes wilt over land.
Now the Gulf has advanced some 20 miles (32 km) inland, thanks in large part to the Army Corps. The Corps started as a Revolutionary War regiment, fortifying Bunker Hill, but it evolved into an all-purpose engineering unit, eventually overseeing local flood control on the Mississippi. The Corps ordered communities to imprison the river in a narrow channel with a strict "levees only" policy, rejecting calls to give the river room to spread out. So levees rose, and the Corps repeatedly declared the river floodproof. But the constrained river also rose, and its jailbreaks repeatedly proved the Corps wrong. In the epic flood of 1927, crevasses shredded the entire valley and nearly destroyed New Orleans.
Congress rewarded this failure by allowing the Corps to seize control of the entire river and its tributaries, an unprecedented Big Government project that foreshadowed the New Deal and established the Corps as the U.S.'s manipulator of water and manhandler of nature. It built dams, floodways, revetments and pumped-up levees throughout the Mississippi basin, caging the beast in its channel, safeguarding riverfront cities, creating a reliable web of liquid highways. But by walling off the river, trapping its sediments behind giant dams and armoring its erosive banks with concrete, the Corps inadvertently choked off the land-building process. The straitjacketed river now carries less than half its original sediment load down to Louisiana. So there's little new land-building material to offset the natural erosion of the coast, much less the unnatural rising of the sea fueled by global warming.
The result is that New Orleans is sinking, and about 30% of the coast's wetlands have slipped into the Gulf, jutting Louisiana's chin even further into the path of Mother Nature's fist, endangering the U.S.'s largest offshore oil and gas fields, a lucrative seafood industry, a busy network of ports and about 2 million people. If Mexico had seized all that land, we'd be at war. LSU hydraulic engineer Hassan Mashriqui says just 100 yds. (91 m) of cypress trees can reduce wave energy 95%; he has seen a similar phenomenon with mangroves in his native Bangladesh. Katrina and then Hurricane Rita confirmed that marshes knock down surges as well. "Basically, we found that none of the levees that failed were protected by wetlands or trees," Mashriqui says.
Oil and gas canals have accelerated the land losses. But so have Corps navigation canals, especially the notorious Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a shipping shortcut to the Port of New Orleans that was a larger dirt-moving project than the Panama Canal when it opened in 1965. The canal never carried many ships, but it has carried plenty of saltwater into freshwater marshes and cypress forests, killing nearly 100 sq. mi. (259 sq km) of wetlands. Shortly before Katrina, Mashriqui called it a "critical and fundamental flaw" in New Orleans' defenses; after Katrina, his modeling found that the outlet boosted Katrina's surge 2 ft. (0.6 m) and increased its velocity 10-fold, overwhelming St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. "This was a disaster created by the Corps," Mashriqui says.
A TRAGEDY OF PRIORITIES
NEW ORLEANS STILL MIGHT HAVE FENDED off Katrina if its levees hadn't played matador defense. After Hurricane Betsy pummeled New Orleans in 1965, Congress assigned the Corps to protect the city from a 100-year storm. The agency's first mistake was calculating that 100-year event as a modest Category 3 hurricane, even though Betsy had been a 4, and the National Weather Service later proposed a more severe 4. The Corps then made such egregious engineering errors that it wasn't even ready for a smaller storm. For example, its levees sagged as much as 5 ft. (1.5 m) lower than their design because the Corps miscalculated sea level and then failed to adjust for subsidence. Some were built in soils with the stability of oatmeal. "These were inexcusable, lethal mistakes," says University of California, Berkeley, engineering professor Robert Bea, who led a post-Katrina investigation for the National Science Foundation. The Corps also built most of its levees around swampland, a conscious effort to promote the development of low-lying subdivisions like New Orleans East. That no longer seemed like such a good idea after New Orleans East went underwater during Katrina. "That should be the first lesson: build levees around people, not around wetlands," says Paul Harrison of Environmental Defense.
The basic problem is that protecting New Orleans from deadly storms was never anyone's top priority. That's why the city's main hurricane project was 37 years behind schedule when Katrina hit. Louisiana's congressional delegation steered Corps funds toward boondoggles that had nothing to do with flood protection, like a $2 billion effort to channelize the Red River for barges that never materialized. Stingy local officials actually helped scuttle a Corps plan to build pumps and floodgates along Lake Pontchartrain, a plan that could have prevented much of Katrina's flooding. "We can beat ourselves up about the past--or we can use the past to do business differently in the future," says Corps Colonel Jeffrey Bedey, who is now overseeing construction of, yes, huge pumps and floodgates along Lake Pontchartrain. "I don't just mean we the Corps. I mean we the country."
Corps leaders often say their projects simply reflect the will of the nation; when the U.S. wanted them to ransack the landscape with dams and dredges, they saluted and obeyed. But it's also true that the Corps helps shape that will. In recent years the Government Accountability Office, the National Academies of Science and the Pentagon inspector general have documented the agency's bias toward approving projects that keep its 35,000 employees busy and its congressional paymasters happy. In 2000 its leaders were caught cooking an economic analysis to justify a $1 billion upper Mississippi River lock project and launching a secret Program Growth Initiative to lard their budget with make-work. In New Orleans, the Corps endorsed a $750 million lock on the Industrial Canal even though its economists considered it a waste of money; the agency justified it by citing increasing use, even though use was decreasing.
Pam Dashiell, a community activist in the Lower Ninth Ward, fought for years against the Gulf Outlet and the Industrial Canal lock, lobbying Corps officials and Louisiana politicians to focus on safety instead. But both projects were on the wish list of the port, the city's most powerful interest. Dashiell remembers the hostility of Congressmen like Democrat William Jefferson, now indicted on corruption charges, and Republican David Vitter, now embroiled in a prostitution scandal. "They said I was an obstructionist," she says. "I was like, 'Where are your priorities?'" Her working-class Holy Cross neighborhood had one of the highest elevations in New Orleans, but it was nearly wiped out by the surge that blasted up the Gulf Outlet and tore through floodwalls along the Industrial Canal--just a stone's throw from the white-elephant lock project.
For the U.S.'s water-resources system, these haphazard priorities are a feature, not a bug. The Corps is funded almost exclusively by earmarks, individual slices of pork requested by individual Congressmen. Since F.D.R., Presidents have routinely tried to rein in the agency, with little success. After the Program Growth scandal, the Clinton Administration issued a gentle reminder that Corps generals are supposed to report to their superiors in the Pentagon chain of command but speedily retracted it following a venomous outcry from their real superiors on Capitol Hill. President Bush keeps proposing zero funding for most of the Corps projects that taxpayer and environmental groups hate, but Congress continues to fund them anyway.
So the U.S. has no water-resources policy, just a ready-to-build water-resources agency whose agenda is dictated by an annual funding free-for-all among its 535 bosses. It's a classic example of Washington's iron triangle: commercial interests lobby the Corps and their Congressmen for projects that supply the Corps with work and political cover and help the Congressmen steer jobs and money to constituents and contributors. "It's a sinister system," says American Water Resources Association president Gerry Galloway, a former Army brigadier general who is now a visiting scholar at the Corps. "Water is a national-security issue, but we treat it like the Wild West. The big guns get the money."
Katrina didn't change that system. Louisiana Senators Vitter and Mary Landrieu promptly proposed a bloated quarter-trillion-dollar Louisiana reconstruction bill, drafted by lobbyists for oil, shipping and other corporate interests. The request included $40 billion for the Corps--10 times the agency's budget for the rest of the nation--including nonreconstruction projects like the Industrial Canal lock and a New Iberia port deepening that had flunked the Corps' cost-benefit tests.
It also included pre-Katrina coastal levee schemes, with names like Morganza-to-the-Gulf and Donaldsonville-to-the-Gulf to suggest their grandiose sweep. The bill stalled after it was widely mocked as legislative looting, but it sent the message that pre-Katrina priorities were still in effect. Vitter kept pushing a measure to help timber companies harvest cypress swamps. Landrieu tucked language into emergency bills ordering the Corps to redo its New Iberia analysis and fast-tracking the Industrial Canal lock. "Katrina was just a perfect excuse to pull the old pork off the shelf in the name of otherwise-we-drown," says Tulane law professor Oliver Houck, the sage of Louisiana environmentalism. "And away we go: another Louisiana hayride."
THE PATH FORWARD
THE HAYRIDE HAS NOT YET LEFT THE BARN. Since Katrina, the Corps has focused on repairing and improving its New Orleans defenses: rebuilding or strengthening 220 miles of the city's 350 miles of levees (about 350 km of New Orleans' 560-km levee system), installing gigantic pumps and gates along the lake and releasing block-by-block maps to publicize lingering flood risks. Some engineers believe the new levees are still too short and weak--"They're a frigging disgrace," U.C. Berkeley's Bea says--and the new pumps repeatedly malfunctioned during testing. But the Corps is about to unveil its plan for 100-year protection, with a rumored price tag of $15 billion, and the agency says that by 2011 the city will be safe from "severe storms," though not from storms as severe as Katrina. The Corps has even proposed to close the Gulf Outlet, a stunning turnaround after 40 years. "We're being much, much more conservative," says Thomas Podany, a Corps manager in New Orleans.
The real controversies involve a separate study of Category 5 protection and restoration for the entire Louisiana coast. The initial plans floated by the Corps and its state partners proposed a Maginot Line of towering new levees that evoke the "levees only" policy that failed on the Mississippi River, this time seeking to confine the Gulf. Water needs to go somewhere, and the agency's own modeling suggested that Donaldsonville-to-the-Gulf would not only cut off vast swaths of wetlands but also double storm surges in some areas by piling up water and concentrating its fury. "They're talking about chopping an estuary in half," says John Lopez, a former Corps geologist who is now the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's director of coastal sustainability. "Even for the Corps, that's extreme."
Morganza-to-the-Gulf is less extreme but imminent; it's part of a $20 billion national package of Corps projects nearing congressional approval. The Corps has proposed to use "leaky levees" to allow tidal exchange, but many scientists predict the structures will still wall off marshes, providing a false sense of security to vulnerable towns while increasing their vulnerability. LSU's Van Heerden calls it "absolutely screwy, the exact opposite of what we need." Many scientists argue that it's dangerous and unrealistic to commit billions of dollars to protect middle-of-nowhere fishing towns, when the Corps has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects, and cities like New York and Miami are largely exposed to the sea. They want the Corps to focus on fixing the coast and protecting denser communities while helping families in small coastal towns elevate homes or move to higher ground. "I'm afraid that once we say yes, we're giving clearance to levees all across the state," says LSU ecologist Robert Twilley, who's leading Louisiana's science-review team. "My great fear is that we're going to cut off the coast with barriers, just like we did to the river. I'd hate for that to be my legacy."
Even Morganza's most ardent defenders say coastal levees can have dire coastal consequences. But they don't want to do nothing for people in harm's way. "I sit up at night and ask myself, Why the hell do you want to spend $1 billion on another levee?" says Jerome Zeringue, a biologist who runs the local levee district. "But if we don't protect Dulac, there won't be a Dulac."
In Shrimpers Row in tiny Dulac, a sign says WATER ON ROAD AHEAD--not a flashing sign, a permanent sign. Ivy Pierre has fished these bayous since he was a kid. He says the biggest change over his 78 years is that he walks up a ladder instead of down a ladder to climb into his boat. "We're sinking!" he says. Katrina was the fifth time his house has flooded, but home is a powerful place. "They call it Dulac," he says with a grin, "because we Du what we Lac!"
Dulac is ground zero in an age-old coastal debate: Defend or retreat? It's worth noting that the people of Dulac didn't move into harm's way. Harm moved into their way when the coast collapsed around them. But levees can create perverse incentives; Pierre wanted to elevate his house until he heard the Feds might protect it for him. Pierre also understands that Dulac might be doomed, or at least a bit remote for American taxpayers to protect for more than $10 million a mile, and he might be willing to move to higher ground for the right offer. "Retreat is not an American thing," Houck says. "We need a better word for it, because the concept is inexorable."
Corps managers say they're open to non-structural approaches to reducing flood risk. They also say they might adjust their levee paths to avoid damaging the coast. But expectations are hardening. "Morganza is considered egregious in the scientific community, but there's not a lot of enthusiasm down there for changing the alignment," says Randy Hanchey, who left the Corps after 37 years to oversee coastal projects for Louisiana. "The politics are very tricky."
Levees are still seen as instant local relief, even though Morganza is supposed to be a 16-year project and would probably take much longer. Restoration is often cast as a more general solution, even though scientists expect the Gulf to advance to the New Orleans suburbs within a decade. So political pressure and engineering instincts tend to favor a futile effort to wall ourselves off from nature. But Katrina and Rita wiped out 217 sq. mi. (562 sq km) of wetlands in a single month. And even Bush has acknowledged that without the coast, Louisiana is toast.
The good news is that scientists believe they know how to save it. They want the Corps to let go of the river in strategic areas so it can get back to work building land, even if that requires rearranging navigation at the mouth of the Mississippi. They want to fill in oil and gas canals, constrict the Gulf Outlet and start pumping sediment back into ridges and barrier islands. The Corps developed $14 billion worth of Louisiana restoration plans before Katrina, but Bush scaled them back to $2 billion. Now the scientists want to think even bigger about the entire ecosystem, even the sediments trapped behind dams 1,000 miles upstream (about 1,600 km). And they don't want to have to think about new to-the-Gulfs schemes that could further degrade the coast.
Can the system adapt? The Corps has announced "12 actions for change," but it's hard to find outsiders who believe that it has moved beyond its "teach Mother Nature a lesson" roots. It's still not a Corps of ecologists. And its projects are still a popular form of political swag for its enablers on Capitol Hill. The $20 billion Corps package also includes some modest reforms that would require more review of the agency's projects and mitigation of their environmental damage. But the Senate overwhelmingly rejected an effort to require the prioritization of Corps projects according to national need. And on Wednesday, the Bush Administration threatened to veto the "unaffordable" bill. Lieut. General Robert Van Antwerp, the new Corps commander, would like to see an independent commission recommending water projects outside the political process, like the one that advises military-base closures. But if New Orleans has to wait for an independent commission, it's probably time to invest in scuba gear. "We've got to break the cycle," Twilley says. "We've got to stop the political hacking. If we really want to go to the moon, we ought to go."
The scientists make the task sound simple: build New Orleans 500-year protection and restore its natural protection. Have the courage to cause inconvenience and economic harm to some in the name of protecting all. After all, Katrina was harmful too. Moving 30 million tons of debris was pretty inconvenient. And the next Katrina is a question of when, not if.
Since Katrina, New Orleans has lost more than one-third of its population, and only two of St. Bernard Parish's 26 child-care centers have reopened. In the Lower Ninth Ward, floodwalls have been rebuilt and reinforced, but behind them stand blocks full of overgrown lots, where the remains of a gas meter or front step here or there provide the only evidence of the houses and lives washed away. "I look at this, and I think of the shortsighted people who crippled a great city," Dashiell says. She knows that city needs better hospitals and more jobs. But first, better levees and more wetlands. Otherwise, it's going to need an obituary.
Mountain Dews Green Label Art Bottles, typical of new world packaging
The New York Times
August 10, 2007
Product Packages Now Shout to Get Your Attention
By LOUISE STORY
In the last 100 years, Pepsi had changed the look of its can, and before that its bottles, only 10 times. This year alone, the soft-drink maker will switch designs every few weeks.
Kleenex, after 40 years of sticking with square and rectangular boxes, has started selling tissues in oval packages.
Coors Light bottles now have labels that turn blue when the beer is chilled to the right temperature. And Huggies’ Henry the Hippo hand soap bottles have a light that flashes for 20 seconds to show children how long they should wash their hands.
Consumer goods companies, which once saw packages largely as containers for shipping their products, are now using them more as 3-D ads to grab shoppers’ attention.
The shift is mostly because of the rise of the Internet and hundreds of television channels, which mean marketers can no longer count on people seeing their commercials.
So they are using their bottles, cans, boxes and plastic packs to improve sales by attracting the eyes of consumers, who often make most of their shopping decisions at the last minute while standing in front of store shelves.
“The media is fragmented, and we can’t find people — we can’t get them to sit down and listen to our argument on a television spot,” said Jerry Kathman, chief executive of LPK, a brand agency based in Cincinnati. “The package can convey that argument.”
As recently as the 1990s, most package designs were retained for seven or more years. Now marketing executives say they are constantly planning package overhauls. The average life of a package before its next makeover is down to two years, they add.
Shoppers have also grown accustomed to looking for a little visual pop on aisle shelves as design has become a mainstream marketing tool — Target stores in particular use that visual pop as a key advertising theme, for example. Sameness carries a risk that a product will fade into the background.
“Consumers are looking for what’s new,” said Kimberly Drosos, director for package development at Unilever North America, which recently changed the shape of its Suave shampoo bottles for the first time in 25 years, and sells Axe shower gel bottles shaped like video-game joysticks.
Ms. Drosos added: “They say, ‘What else do you have for me? That was nice last year, but I want the packaging to be refreshing.’ ”
There are many other reasons behind the shift. Some packaging changes are occurring because companies are trying to shrink container sizes and reduce their environmental impact, or because of new approaches for old products (Orbit now sells gum in a bottle made to fit in a car’s cup holder). Some brands are bragging that their bottles of cleansers and other household products are attractive enough to be left out in plain view, rather than hidden in a closet or drawer.
“It’s an inexpensive way to really deliver that newness to people’s homes,” said Becky Walter, director for innovation design and testing at Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex, Huggies and other brands. “It’s not like they have to go out and purchase new furniture.”
Evian is among the marketers using packaging to add a sense of luxury to ordinary products — its new “palace bottle” water, for example, is being sold in restaurants and hotels. The bottle has an elegant swanlike neck and sits on a small silver tray. Technology is also driving the changes — like the thermochromatic ink in the Coors label that changes the color of the label’s mountains with the temperature of the beer bottle.
And in the next few years, Pepsi drinkers may smell a sweet aroma that is sprayed out when they pop open Pepsi cans — such as a wild cherry scent misting from a Wild Cherry Pepsi can. Executives at the company have also considered cans that can spray a light water mist when they are opened, but they are unlikely to add that feature soon because of the cost, they say.
Laurent Nielly, who heads packaging innovation for Pepsi in North America, said young people — Pepsi’s central audience — have shorter attention spans than previous generations, so bottles and other containers have to change more often. Pepsi is experimenting with the designs on its Mountain Dew bottles, selling aluminum bottles covered in graffiti-like designs that will be changed 12 times from May to October. The bottles are sold only in eastern Virginia now, but the soda maker may expand the approach if sales of the bottles go well.
If products aren’t spraying consumers, they may someday be talking to them.
Some companies are studying technology to put a computer chip and tiny speaker inside a package. This idea might be particularly useful for big companies like Unilever that want to cross-promote their various brands. So a package of cheese could say “I go well with Triscuit crackers” when a shopper takes it off the shelf. As the costs of the chips come down, marketing executives said this and other technologies would appear more on shelves.
All these packaging makeovers may make trips to the grocery stores more entertaining. Or the result could be confusion, if not downright annoyance.
“If you’re walking down a row in a supermarket and every package is screaming at you, it sounds like a terrifying, disgusting experience,” said Tracy Lovatt, director for behavioral planning at BBDO North America, an advertising agency in the Omnicom Group. “But if brands use this wisely, new packaging can be quite powerful. It’s the thing that will interrupt you at the store, and get you to spend time with that brand, and then, hopefully, buy in.”
August 10, 2007
Product Packages Now Shout to Get Your Attention
By LOUISE STORY
In the last 100 years, Pepsi had changed the look of its can, and before that its bottles, only 10 times. This year alone, the soft-drink maker will switch designs every few weeks.
Kleenex, after 40 years of sticking with square and rectangular boxes, has started selling tissues in oval packages.
Coors Light bottles now have labels that turn blue when the beer is chilled to the right temperature. And Huggies’ Henry the Hippo hand soap bottles have a light that flashes for 20 seconds to show children how long they should wash their hands.
Consumer goods companies, which once saw packages largely as containers for shipping their products, are now using them more as 3-D ads to grab shoppers’ attention.
The shift is mostly because of the rise of the Internet and hundreds of television channels, which mean marketers can no longer count on people seeing their commercials.
So they are using their bottles, cans, boxes and plastic packs to improve sales by attracting the eyes of consumers, who often make most of their shopping decisions at the last minute while standing in front of store shelves.
“The media is fragmented, and we can’t find people — we can’t get them to sit down and listen to our argument on a television spot,” said Jerry Kathman, chief executive of LPK, a brand agency based in Cincinnati. “The package can convey that argument.”
As recently as the 1990s, most package designs were retained for seven or more years. Now marketing executives say they are constantly planning package overhauls. The average life of a package before its next makeover is down to two years, they add.
Shoppers have also grown accustomed to looking for a little visual pop on aisle shelves as design has become a mainstream marketing tool — Target stores in particular use that visual pop as a key advertising theme, for example. Sameness carries a risk that a product will fade into the background.
“Consumers are looking for what’s new,” said Kimberly Drosos, director for package development at Unilever North America, which recently changed the shape of its Suave shampoo bottles for the first time in 25 years, and sells Axe shower gel bottles shaped like video-game joysticks.
Ms. Drosos added: “They say, ‘What else do you have for me? That was nice last year, but I want the packaging to be refreshing.’ ”
There are many other reasons behind the shift. Some packaging changes are occurring because companies are trying to shrink container sizes and reduce their environmental impact, or because of new approaches for old products (Orbit now sells gum in a bottle made to fit in a car’s cup holder). Some brands are bragging that their bottles of cleansers and other household products are attractive enough to be left out in plain view, rather than hidden in a closet or drawer.
“It’s an inexpensive way to really deliver that newness to people’s homes,” said Becky Walter, director for innovation design and testing at Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex, Huggies and other brands. “It’s not like they have to go out and purchase new furniture.”
Evian is among the marketers using packaging to add a sense of luxury to ordinary products — its new “palace bottle” water, for example, is being sold in restaurants and hotels. The bottle has an elegant swanlike neck and sits on a small silver tray. Technology is also driving the changes — like the thermochromatic ink in the Coors label that changes the color of the label’s mountains with the temperature of the beer bottle.
And in the next few years, Pepsi drinkers may smell a sweet aroma that is sprayed out when they pop open Pepsi cans — such as a wild cherry scent misting from a Wild Cherry Pepsi can. Executives at the company have also considered cans that can spray a light water mist when they are opened, but they are unlikely to add that feature soon because of the cost, they say.
Laurent Nielly, who heads packaging innovation for Pepsi in North America, said young people — Pepsi’s central audience — have shorter attention spans than previous generations, so bottles and other containers have to change more often. Pepsi is experimenting with the designs on its Mountain Dew bottles, selling aluminum bottles covered in graffiti-like designs that will be changed 12 times from May to October. The bottles are sold only in eastern Virginia now, but the soda maker may expand the approach if sales of the bottles go well.
If products aren’t spraying consumers, they may someday be talking to them.
Some companies are studying technology to put a computer chip and tiny speaker inside a package. This idea might be particularly useful for big companies like Unilever that want to cross-promote their various brands. So a package of cheese could say “I go well with Triscuit crackers” when a shopper takes it off the shelf. As the costs of the chips come down, marketing executives said this and other technologies would appear more on shelves.
All these packaging makeovers may make trips to the grocery stores more entertaining. Or the result could be confusion, if not downright annoyance.
“If you’re walking down a row in a supermarket and every package is screaming at you, it sounds like a terrifying, disgusting experience,” said Tracy Lovatt, director for behavioral planning at BBDO North America, an advertising agency in the Omnicom Group. “But if brands use this wisely, new packaging can be quite powerful. It’s the thing that will interrupt you at the store, and get you to spend time with that brand, and then, hopefully, buy in.”
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
What to get for World Geography at CMHS: the Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas (RMQRWA)
Buying school supplies is fun - as long you're not paying the bill. Here's what you need for World Geography under Robert Trudeau:
1) The Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas is a requirement for geography class at CMHS. I use it almost every day because it is non pareil at developing map skills and a knowledge base. The RMQRWA costs about $6.
Where to get them?
* Barnes & Noble.
* Tower Books, next door to the Starbucks on Line Ave, at Uptown Shopping Center.
* Borders Express, Pierre Bossier Mall.
* Borders Outlet at La Boardwalk closed last week. Sorry.
* Amazon.com (Used is fine) & eBay.com.
* BooksAMillion, Bossier.
* Sometimes there are copies at Walmart and even at office supply stores.
A good idea is to Call Before You Go. Today bookstores typically stock a small number of copies and re-order when they sell out. It's one way of keeping prices low.
2) Geography class fee: $5. Pay by cash or check made to Caddo Parish Magnet HS. The fee covers a class subscription to Newsweek magazine (copies shared by all my classes and remaining in the classroom during class usage). It also defrays the cost of bus trips to Stoner Elementary for a teaching field trip and to Meadows Museum of Art for additional study.
3) Notebooks: make sure the edges of the pages are perforated. When you must hand in your work, the pages must have a clean edge. Students also need a system for keeping handouts in their notes.
4) Map pencils or some sort of pastel markers (Crayolas are fine) for adding color to graphics.
5) Scissors. I like to use scissors frequently in the hands-on activities that make class more interesting. Any size of "school scissors" will do.
Flash drive: a jump drive, or flash drive, is Not required but is highly recommended. Good students save their work on the computer by these tiny devices. I use mine all the time and have had one in use for some 4 years.
Questions or observations?
a) trudeau@earthlink.net
b) 861-6809.
1) The Rand McNally Quick Reference World Atlas is a requirement for geography class at CMHS. I use it almost every day because it is non pareil at developing map skills and a knowledge base. The RMQRWA costs about $6.
Where to get them?
* Barnes & Noble.
* Tower Books, next door to the Starbucks on Line Ave, at Uptown Shopping Center.
* Borders Express, Pierre Bossier Mall.
* Borders Outlet at La Boardwalk closed last week. Sorry.
* Amazon.com (Used is fine) & eBay.com.
* BooksAMillion, Bossier.
* Sometimes there are copies at Walmart and even at office supply stores.
A good idea is to Call Before You Go. Today bookstores typically stock a small number of copies and re-order when they sell out. It's one way of keeping prices low.
2) Geography class fee: $5. Pay by cash or check made to Caddo Parish Magnet HS. The fee covers a class subscription to Newsweek magazine (copies shared by all my classes and remaining in the classroom during class usage). It also defrays the cost of bus trips to Stoner Elementary for a teaching field trip and to Meadows Museum of Art for additional study.
3) Notebooks: make sure the edges of the pages are perforated. When you must hand in your work, the pages must have a clean edge. Students also need a system for keeping handouts in their notes.
4) Map pencils or some sort of pastel markers (Crayolas are fine) for adding color to graphics.
5) Scissors. I like to use scissors frequently in the hands-on activities that make class more interesting. Any size of "school scissors" will do.
Flash drive: a jump drive, or flash drive, is Not required but is highly recommended. Good students save their work on the computer by these tiny devices. I use mine all the time and have had one in use for some 4 years.
Questions or observations?
a) trudeau@earthlink.net
b) 861-6809.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Cat story: 10,000 years ago in the Middle East
June 29, 2007
Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East
By NICHOLAS WADE
Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.
The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.
At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.
A scientific basis for this scenario has been established by Carlos A. Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and his colleagues. He spent more than six years collecting species of wildcat in places as far apart as Scotland, Israel, Namibia and Mongolia. He then analyzed the DNA of the wildcats and of many house cats and fancy cats.
Five subspecies of wildcat are distributed across the Old World. They are known as the European wildcat, the Near Eastern wildcat, the Southern African wildcat, the Central Asian wildcat and the Chinese desert cat. Their patterns of DNA fall into five clusters. The DNA of all house cats and fancy cats falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor, Dr. Driscoll and his colleagues said in a report published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.
The wildcat DNA closest to that of house cats came from 15 individuals collected in the deserts of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. The house cats in the study fell into five lineages, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, a type that is passed down through the female line. Since the oldest archaeological site with a cat burial is about 9,500 years old, the geneticists suggest that the founders of the five lineages lived around this time and were the first cats to be domesticated.
Wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated in the Near East by 10,000 years ago, so it seems likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats, and that the settlers welcomed the cats’ help in controlling them.
Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.
Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.
Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. But three years ago a group of French archaeologists led by Jean-Denis Vigne discovered the remains of an 8-month-old cat buried with its human owner at a Neolithic site in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island was settled by farmers from Turkey who brought their domesticated animals with them, presumably including cats, because there is no evidence of native wildcats in Cyprus.
The date of the burial far precedes Egyptian civilization. Together with the new genetic evidence, it places the domestication of the cat in a different context, the beginnings of agriculture in the Near East, and probably in the villages of the Fertile Crescent, the belt of land that stretches up through the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and down through what is now Iraq.
Dr. Stephen O’Brien, an expert on the genetics of the cat family and a co-author of the Science report, described the domestication of the cat as “the beginning of one of the major experiments in biological history” because the number of house cats in the world now exceeds half a billion while most of the 36 other species of cat, and many wildcats, are now threatened with extinction.
So a valuable outcome of the new study is the discovery of genetic markers in the DNA that distinguish native wildcats from the house cats and feral domestic cats with which they often interbreed. In Britain and other countries, true wildcats may be highly protected by law.
David Macdonald of Oxford University, a co-author of the report, has spent 10 years trying to preserve the Scottish wildcat, of which only 400 or so remain. “We can use some of the genetic markers to talk to conservation agencies like the Scottish Natural Heritage,” he said.
Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East
By NICHOLAS WADE
Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.
The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.
At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.
A scientific basis for this scenario has been established by Carlos A. Driscoll of the National Cancer Institute and his colleagues. He spent more than six years collecting species of wildcat in places as far apart as Scotland, Israel, Namibia and Mongolia. He then analyzed the DNA of the wildcats and of many house cats and fancy cats.
Five subspecies of wildcat are distributed across the Old World. They are known as the European wildcat, the Near Eastern wildcat, the Southern African wildcat, the Central Asian wildcat and the Chinese desert cat. Their patterns of DNA fall into five clusters. The DNA of all house cats and fancy cats falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor, Dr. Driscoll and his colleagues said in a report published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.
The wildcat DNA closest to that of house cats came from 15 individuals collected in the deserts of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the researchers say. The house cats in the study fell into five lineages, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, a type that is passed down through the female line. Since the oldest archaeological site with a cat burial is about 9,500 years old, the geneticists suggest that the founders of the five lineages lived around this time and were the first cats to be domesticated.
Wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated in the Near East by 10,000 years ago, so it seems likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats, and that the settlers welcomed the cats’ help in controlling them.
Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants. “The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side,” Dr. Driscoll said.
Cats are “indicators of human cultural adolescence,” he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering, their way of life for millions of years, to settled communities.
Until recently the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. But three years ago a group of French archaeologists led by Jean-Denis Vigne discovered the remains of an 8-month-old cat buried with its human owner at a Neolithic site in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island was settled by farmers from Turkey who brought their domesticated animals with them, presumably including cats, because there is no evidence of native wildcats in Cyprus.
The date of the burial far precedes Egyptian civilization. Together with the new genetic evidence, it places the domestication of the cat in a different context, the beginnings of agriculture in the Near East, and probably in the villages of the Fertile Crescent, the belt of land that stretches up through the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and down through what is now Iraq.
Dr. Stephen O’Brien, an expert on the genetics of the cat family and a co-author of the Science report, described the domestication of the cat as “the beginning of one of the major experiments in biological history” because the number of house cats in the world now exceeds half a billion while most of the 36 other species of cat, and many wildcats, are now threatened with extinction.
So a valuable outcome of the new study is the discovery of genetic markers in the DNA that distinguish native wildcats from the house cats and feral domestic cats with which they often interbreed. In Britain and other countries, true wildcats may be highly protected by law.
David Macdonald of Oxford University, a co-author of the report, has spent 10 years trying to preserve the Scottish wildcat, of which only 400 or so remain. “We can use some of the genetic markers to talk to conservation agencies like the Scottish Natural Heritage,” he said.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
The late Diana, Princess of Wales, and the definition of globalization
Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana's death.
Question: How come?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines. This is sent to you by a Canadian, using Bill Gates' technology, and you're probably reading this on your computer, that uses Taiwanese chips, and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexicans.
Forwarded along the internet by geography teachers and similar types.
Answer: Princess Diana's death.
Question: How come?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines. This is sent to you by a Canadian, using Bill Gates' technology, and you're probably reading this on your computer, that uses Taiwanese chips, and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexicans.
Forwarded along the internet by geography teachers and similar types.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Why All Americans have a stake in Louisiana and its flooding and coastal weirdness
Pittsburgh cabbie has a stake in saving La.'s coast
May 21, 2007
Editor's note: This column by author John M. Barry first appeared in the May 12 Washington Post.
There has been much debate in the past 20 months over protecting Louisiana from another lethal hurricane, but nearly all of it has been conducted without any real understanding of the geological context. Congress and the Bush administration need to recognize six facts that define the national interest.
Fact 1: The Gulf of Mexico once reached north to Cape Girardeau, Mo. But the Mississippi River carries such an enormous sediment load that, combined with a falling sea level, it deposited enough sediment to create 35,000 square miles of land from Cape Girardeau to the present mouth of the river.
This river-created land includes the entire coast, complete with barrier islands, stretching from Mississippi to Texas. But four human interventions have interfered with this natural process; three of them that benefit the rest of the country have dramatically increased the hurricane threat to the Gulf Coast.
Fact 2: Acres of riverbank at a time used to collapse into the river system providing a main source of sediment. To prevent this and to protect lives and property, engineers stopped such collapses by paving hundreds of miles of the river with riprap and even concrete, beginning more than 1,000 miles upriver — including on the Ohio, Missouri and other tributaries — from New Orleans. Reservoirs for flood protection also impound sediment. These and other actions deprive the Mississippi of 60 to 70 percent of its natural sediment load, starving the coast.
Fact 3: To stop sandbars from blocking shipping at the mouth of the Mississippi, engineers built jetties extending more than two miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. This engineering makes Tulsa, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and other cities into ports with direct access to the ocean, greatly enhancing the nation's economy. The river carries 20 percent of the nation's exports, including 60 percent of its grain exports, and the river at New Orleans is the busiest port in the world. But the jetties prevent any of the sediment remaining in the river from replenishing the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts and barrier islands; instead, the jetties drop the sediment off the continental shelf.
Fact 4: Levees that prevent river flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi interfere with the replenishment of the land locally as well.
Fact 5: Roughly 30 percent of the country's domestic oil and gas production comes from offshore Louisiana, and to service that production the industry created more than 10,000 miles of canals and pipelines through the marsh.
Every inch of those 10,000-plus miles lets saltwater penetrate, and eat away at, the coast. So energy production has enormously accelerated what was a slow degradation, transforming a long-term problem into an immediate crisis. The deprivation of sediment is like moving a block of ice from the freezer to the sink, where it begins to melt; the effect of the canals and pipelines is like attacking that ice with an ice pick, breaking it up.
As a result, 2,100 square miles of coastal land and barrier islands have melted into the Gulf of Mexico. This land once served as a buffer between the ocean and populated areas in Louisiana and part of Mississippi, protecting them during hurricanes. Each land mile over which a hurricane travels absorbs roughly a foot of storm surge.
The nation as a whole gets nearly all the benefits of engineering the river. Louisiana and some of coastal Mississippi get 100 percent of the costs. Eastern New Orleans (including the lower 9th Ward) and St. Bernard Parish — nearly all of which, incidentally, is at or above sea level — exemplify this allocation of costs and benefits. Three man-made shipping canals pass through them, creating almost no jobs there but benefiting commerce throughout the country. Yet nearly all the 175,000 people living there saw their homes flooded not because of any natural vulnerability but because of levee breaks. These levee breaks were along these three man-made shipping canals.
Fact 6: Without action, land loss will continue, and it will increasingly jeopardize populated areas, the port system and energy production. This would be catastrophic for America. Scientists say the problem can be solved, even with rising sea levels, but that we have only a decade to begin addressing it in a serious way or the damage may be irreversible.
Despite all this and President Bush's pledge from New Orleans in September 2005 that "we will do what it takes" to help people rebuild, a draft White House cuts its own recommendation of $2 billion for coastal restoration to $1 billion while calling for an increase in the state's contribution from the usual 35 percent to 50 percent. This turns the idea of the Union on its head. Generating benefits to the nation is what created the problem, and the nation needs to solve it. Put simply: Why should a cab driver in Pittsburgh or Tulsa pay to fix Louisiana's coast? Because he gets a stronger economy and lower energy costs from it, and because his benefits created the problem.
The failure of Congress and the president to act aggressively to repair the coastline at the mouth of the Mississippi River could threaten the economic vitality of the nation. Louisiana, one of the poorest states, can no longer afford to underwrite benefits for the rest of the nation.
John M. Barry is the author of "Rising Tide" and secretary of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East.
May 21, 2007
Editor's note: This column by author John M. Barry first appeared in the May 12 Washington Post.
There has been much debate in the past 20 months over protecting Louisiana from another lethal hurricane, but nearly all of it has been conducted without any real understanding of the geological context. Congress and the Bush administration need to recognize six facts that define the national interest.
Fact 1: The Gulf of Mexico once reached north to Cape Girardeau, Mo. But the Mississippi River carries such an enormous sediment load that, combined with a falling sea level, it deposited enough sediment to create 35,000 square miles of land from Cape Girardeau to the present mouth of the river.
This river-created land includes the entire coast, complete with barrier islands, stretching from Mississippi to Texas. But four human interventions have interfered with this natural process; three of them that benefit the rest of the country have dramatically increased the hurricane threat to the Gulf Coast.
Fact 2: Acres of riverbank at a time used to collapse into the river system providing a main source of sediment. To prevent this and to protect lives and property, engineers stopped such collapses by paving hundreds of miles of the river with riprap and even concrete, beginning more than 1,000 miles upriver — including on the Ohio, Missouri and other tributaries — from New Orleans. Reservoirs for flood protection also impound sediment. These and other actions deprive the Mississippi of 60 to 70 percent of its natural sediment load, starving the coast.
Fact 3: To stop sandbars from blocking shipping at the mouth of the Mississippi, engineers built jetties extending more than two miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. This engineering makes Tulsa, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and other cities into ports with direct access to the ocean, greatly enhancing the nation's economy. The river carries 20 percent of the nation's exports, including 60 percent of its grain exports, and the river at New Orleans is the busiest port in the world. But the jetties prevent any of the sediment remaining in the river from replenishing the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts and barrier islands; instead, the jetties drop the sediment off the continental shelf.
Fact 4: Levees that prevent river flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi interfere with the replenishment of the land locally as well.
Fact 5: Roughly 30 percent of the country's domestic oil and gas production comes from offshore Louisiana, and to service that production the industry created more than 10,000 miles of canals and pipelines through the marsh.
Every inch of those 10,000-plus miles lets saltwater penetrate, and eat away at, the coast. So energy production has enormously accelerated what was a slow degradation, transforming a long-term problem into an immediate crisis. The deprivation of sediment is like moving a block of ice from the freezer to the sink, where it begins to melt; the effect of the canals and pipelines is like attacking that ice with an ice pick, breaking it up.
As a result, 2,100 square miles of coastal land and barrier islands have melted into the Gulf of Mexico. This land once served as a buffer between the ocean and populated areas in Louisiana and part of Mississippi, protecting them during hurricanes. Each land mile over which a hurricane travels absorbs roughly a foot of storm surge.
The nation as a whole gets nearly all the benefits of engineering the river. Louisiana and some of coastal Mississippi get 100 percent of the costs. Eastern New Orleans (including the lower 9th Ward) and St. Bernard Parish — nearly all of which, incidentally, is at or above sea level — exemplify this allocation of costs and benefits. Three man-made shipping canals pass through them, creating almost no jobs there but benefiting commerce throughout the country. Yet nearly all the 175,000 people living there saw their homes flooded not because of any natural vulnerability but because of levee breaks. These levee breaks were along these three man-made shipping canals.
Fact 6: Without action, land loss will continue, and it will increasingly jeopardize populated areas, the port system and energy production. This would be catastrophic for America. Scientists say the problem can be solved, even with rising sea levels, but that we have only a decade to begin addressing it in a serious way or the damage may be irreversible.
Despite all this and President Bush's pledge from New Orleans in September 2005 that "we will do what it takes" to help people rebuild, a draft White House cuts its own recommendation of $2 billion for coastal restoration to $1 billion while calling for an increase in the state's contribution from the usual 35 percent to 50 percent. This turns the idea of the Union on its head. Generating benefits to the nation is what created the problem, and the nation needs to solve it. Put simply: Why should a cab driver in Pittsburgh or Tulsa pay to fix Louisiana's coast? Because he gets a stronger economy and lower energy costs from it, and because his benefits created the problem.
The failure of Congress and the president to act aggressively to repair the coastline at the mouth of the Mississippi River could threaten the economic vitality of the nation. Louisiana, one of the poorest states, can no longer afford to underwrite benefits for the rest of the nation.
John M. Barry is the author of "Rising Tide" and secretary of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Paper airplanes Do come to mind as you look out the second floor of the new wing at cmhs
Social studies classes will be on the 2nd floor of the new wing next year. English classes on the ground floor. Lots of opportunities for creative signatures in the new rooms.
See me in Rm 205 next year: CMHS has a new wing
Quite a nice room, I must say. An opportunity for me to shed the old and create anew.
Second floor will be nearly all social studies classes. Ground floor nearly all English classes.
Second floor will be nearly all social studies classes. Ground floor nearly all English classes.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Der neue Hauptbahnhof / Deutsch review answers . . .
Deutschland review
1) The Rhine River begins: b) Switzerland
2) The Rhine flows north: b) Rotterdam
3) The capital of Bavaria: c) Munchen.
4) T / Comparing the list of notable products from Italy and Germany leads me to conclude they are both leading nations in design and manufacturing.
5) Germany has had little impact on the US culture. An example would be that there are few German cuisine restaurants to be found in America. F
6) The WWII period saw a partnership, called the Axis by Americans, between Germany and another fascist nation: a) Italy
7) Olive oil, balsamic vinegar and espresso: while enjoyed across the globe these items originate with the c) Italians
Write ‘a’ for origin in Italy and ‘b’ for origin in Germany:
8) Audi / b
9) Ferrari / a
10) Mercedes Benz / b
11) Porsche / b
12) BMW / b
13) Smart Car / b
14) Compare the population of Germany to the US: America is approximately __ times bigger in population. a) 3.5
15. Lego toy system: a) Denmark
16. Name the German company that developed acetylsalicylic acid as a household curative: d) Bayer.
17. The swastika was a symbol of the Nazis for about 15 years. But for 3000 years it was a symbol for good fortune in many widespread cultures. Cite the culture with which it was not associated: c) Christian
18. Name the American jazz leader who helped establish the big band era and was a virtuoso on trumpet: d) Louis Armstrong.
19. Gypsies were targeted by the Third Reich for extermination. The best-known Gypsy-born fellow of the era was the guitarist d) Django Reinhardt.
20. Harlem is a neighborhood in the borough of d) Manhattan.
21. The Nazis were effective at building a type of super-patriotism. To convince the youth of the Nazi point of view they used exaggeration and fabrications. This is called a) propaganda
22. The National Socialist German Worker’s Party was not at all a) socialist
23. Nazi Germany began its conquest of Europe with the nation of Poland, 1939./ F
24. Copenhagen is a German city which is on an island in the Baltic Sea. F
When England last had significant cultural impact: Yellow Submarine, 1968
Notes on the influence of the British in the late 1960's, an era tagged the British Invasion period:
* 1950's and early 60's: anti-war and anti-nuclear protest.
* Mid 1960's - Carnaby Street fashions - London - include bell bottom slacks, platform heels, mini skirt, shag. Movies such as Blow Up and Alfie were influential.
* Mid 60's Brit groups: The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, The Pretty Things, Dusty Springfield, The Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, and Manfred Mann, the Hollies, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Freddie and the Dreamers, Davy Jones of The Monkees, and Herman's Hermits; The Animals and The Spencer Davis Group (featuring Steve Winwood) and The Moody Blues.
* 1964 - Beatles become a hit in the US
* 1967 - Beatles global impact with Sgt Pepper's album - poetry, sonic richness, diversity of styles.
* 1968 - movie Yellow Submarine uses Beatles music and images as directed by a Canadian and designed by a German. Helps define the surreal style called psychedelia.
* The late 1960s were a time when NYC was outdone by the cultural force of London. When Chicago was overwhelmed by San Francisco. When Liverpool was the center of attention.
* 1950's and early 60's: anti-war and anti-nuclear protest.
* Mid 1960's - Carnaby Street fashions - London - include bell bottom slacks, platform heels, mini skirt, shag. Movies such as Blow Up and Alfie were influential.
* Mid 60's Brit groups: The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, The Pretty Things, Dusty Springfield, The Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, and Manfred Mann, the Hollies, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Freddie and the Dreamers, Davy Jones of The Monkees, and Herman's Hermits; The Animals and The Spencer Davis Group (featuring Steve Winwood) and The Moody Blues.
* 1964 - Beatles become a hit in the US
* 1967 - Beatles global impact with Sgt Pepper's album - poetry, sonic richness, diversity of styles.
* 1968 - movie Yellow Submarine uses Beatles music and images as directed by a Canadian and designed by a German. Helps define the surreal style called psychedelia.
* The late 1960s were a time when NYC was outdone by the cultural force of London. When Chicago was overwhelmed by San Francisco. When Liverpool was the center of attention.
Sarsens and Bluestones
Last review of the semester:
At pre-historic Stonehenge . . .
1. Placement of Sarsen stones? inner circle
2. Placement of blue stones? outer circle
3. Larger stones? Sarsens; up to 50 tons, 20 ft high.
4. Quarry sites?
Sarsens: 20 miles away on the Salisbury Plain.
Blue stones: 240 miles away in the mountains of Wales.
5. A 3-piece stone construction is called a __? trilithon
6. Shape of the inner group of stones? horse shoe
7. Construction began about the year 3000 BCE.
8. Building and rebuilding continued about 1000 years.
9. "Gigantic rock"? megalith
10. Horizontal beam across a doorway: lintel.
At pre-historic Stonehenge . . .
1. Placement of Sarsen stones? inner circle
2. Placement of blue stones? outer circle
3. Larger stones? Sarsens; up to 50 tons, 20 ft high.
4. Quarry sites?
Sarsens: 20 miles away on the Salisbury Plain.
Blue stones: 240 miles away in the mountains of Wales.
5. A 3-piece stone construction is called a __? trilithon
6. Shape of the inner group of stones? horse shoe
7. Construction began about the year 3000 BCE.
8. Building and rebuilding continued about 1000 years.
9. "Gigantic rock"? megalith
10. Horizontal beam across a doorway: lintel.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Rosa Parks at a dinner honoring Parks in August of 1965.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Rosa Parks at a dinner honoring Parks in August of 1965.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.
1. a) Atlanta
2. b) Boston U.
3. c) Montgomery.
4. c) Montgomery.
5. a) 1955
6. b) Supreme Court decision.
7. b) MK Gandhi
8. a) non-violent protest
9. b) SCLC
10.False
11. b) J Edgar Hoover
12.a) TNT
13. b) JFK
14. b) 1963
15. b) 39
16. b) public transportation
17. a) Civil Rights Act of 1964
18. c) Johnson.
19. a) Selma
20. a) Montgomery
21. b) 1950 - 1953
Stonehenge: awesome mystery in the south of England
Stonehenge is a henge, a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument located about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury, says Wikipedia. It is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones and is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world.
Archaeologists think that the standing stones were erected around 3200 BC and the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC.
The "henge" portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch.
Archaeological excavation has indicated that around 2600 BC, timber was abandoned in favour of stone and two concentric crescents of holes (called the Q and R Holes) were dug in the centre of the site.
The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on the plan) 43 of which were derived from the Preseli Hills, 250 km away in modern day Pembrokeshire in Wales. Other standing stones may well have been small sarsens, used later as lintels. The far-travelled stones, which weighed about four tons, consisted mostly of spotted dolerite but included examples of rhyolite, tuff and volcanic and calcareous ash.
What was to become known as the Altar Stone (1), a six-ton specimen of green micaceous sandstone, twice the height of the bluestones, is derived from either South Pembrokeshire or the Brecon Beacons and may have stood as a single large monolith.
The next major phase saw 30 enormous sarsen stones (shown grey on the plan) brought from a quarry around 24 miles (40 km) north to the site on the Marlborough Downs. The stones were dressed and fashioned with mortise and tenon joints before 30 were erected as a 33 m (108 ft) diameter circle of standing stones with a 'lintel' of 30 stones resting on top. The lintels were joined to one another using another woodworking method, the tongue in groove joint.
Each standing stone was around 4.1 m (13.5 feet) high, 2.1 m (7.5 feet) wide and weighed around 25 tons. Each had clearly been worked with the final effect in mind.
Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape 13.7 m (45 feet) across with its open end facing north east. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each and were again linked using complex jointings. They are arranged symmetrically; the smallest pair of trilithons were around 6 m (20 feet) tall, the next pair a little higher and the largest, single trilithon in the south west corner would have been 7.3 m (24 feet) tall. Only one upright from the Great Trilithon still stands; 6.7 m (22 ft) is visible and a further 2.4 m (8 feet) is below ground.
The images of a 'dagger' and 14 'axe-heads' have been recorded carved on one of the sarsens, known as stone 53. Further axe-head carvings have been seen on the outer faces of stones known as numbers 3, 4, and 5. They are difficult to date but are morphologically similar to later Bronze Age weapons; recent laser scanning work on the carvings supports this interpretation.
Even though the last known construction of Stonehenge was about 1600 BC, and the last known usage of Stonehenge was during the Iron Age (if not as late as the 7th century), where Roman coins, prehistoric pottery, an unusual bone point and a skeleton of a young male (780-410 cal BC) were found, we have no idea if Stonehenge was in continuous use or exactly how it was used.
Archaeologists think that the standing stones were erected around 3200 BC and the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC.
The "henge" portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch.
Archaeological excavation has indicated that around 2600 BC, timber was abandoned in favour of stone and two concentric crescents of holes (called the Q and R Holes) were dug in the centre of the site.
The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on the plan) 43 of which were derived from the Preseli Hills, 250 km away in modern day Pembrokeshire in Wales. Other standing stones may well have been small sarsens, used later as lintels. The far-travelled stones, which weighed about four tons, consisted mostly of spotted dolerite but included examples of rhyolite, tuff and volcanic and calcareous ash.
What was to become known as the Altar Stone (1), a six-ton specimen of green micaceous sandstone, twice the height of the bluestones, is derived from either South Pembrokeshire or the Brecon Beacons and may have stood as a single large monolith.
The next major phase saw 30 enormous sarsen stones (shown grey on the plan) brought from a quarry around 24 miles (40 km) north to the site on the Marlborough Downs. The stones were dressed and fashioned with mortise and tenon joints before 30 were erected as a 33 m (108 ft) diameter circle of standing stones with a 'lintel' of 30 stones resting on top. The lintels were joined to one another using another woodworking method, the tongue in groove joint.
Each standing stone was around 4.1 m (13.5 feet) high, 2.1 m (7.5 feet) wide and weighed around 25 tons. Each had clearly been worked with the final effect in mind.
Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape 13.7 m (45 feet) across with its open end facing north east. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each and were again linked using complex jointings. They are arranged symmetrically; the smallest pair of trilithons were around 6 m (20 feet) tall, the next pair a little higher and the largest, single trilithon in the south west corner would have been 7.3 m (24 feet) tall. Only one upright from the Great Trilithon still stands; 6.7 m (22 ft) is visible and a further 2.4 m (8 feet) is below ground.
The images of a 'dagger' and 14 'axe-heads' have been recorded carved on one of the sarsens, known as stone 53. Further axe-head carvings have been seen on the outer faces of stones known as numbers 3, 4, and 5. They are difficult to date but are morphologically similar to later Bronze Age weapons; recent laser scanning work on the carvings supports this interpretation.
Even though the last known construction of Stonehenge was about 1600 BC, and the last known usage of Stonehenge was during the Iron Age (if not as late as the 7th century), where Roman coins, prehistoric pottery, an unusual bone point and a skeleton of a young male (780-410 cal BC) were found, we have no idea if Stonehenge was in continuous use or exactly how it was used.
Friday, May 11, 2007
A golden age in which Muslims, Jews and Christians worked in harmony
During the Islamic Golden Age (fl. 622 CE - 1258 CE in Common Era calendar; or 1 AH - 656 AH in Islamic calendar), scholars and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to philosophy, science, and technology, both by preserving and building upon earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations. Scientific and intellectual achievements blossomed in the Golden Age, and passed on to Europe to be expanded upon in the European Renaissance.[1]
The Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) , who ruled between 711 and 1492, are commonly known as the Moors. The territory, which they called "Al Andalus", initially included much of Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France.
The word Moors is a corrupted word referring to the people who came from Morocco (Mauri). Later, other words such as Moriscos and Mudejares were used.
The golden age of al-Andalus: crops produced using irrigation, along with food imported from from the Middle East, provided the area around Córdoba and some other Andalusī cities with an agricultural economic sector by far the most advanced in western Europe.
Among European cities, Córdoba, with a population of perhaps 500,000, was second only to Constantinople in size and prosperity.
Within the Islamic world, Córdoba was one of the leading cultural centres. The work of its most important philosophers and scientists (notably Ibn Rushd ("Averroes") had a major influence on the intellectual life of medieval western Europe.
Muslims and non-Muslims often came from abroad to study in the famous libraries and universities of al-Andalus. This transmission was to have a significant impact on the formation of the European Renaissance.
The Caliphate treated non-Muslims differently at different times. The longest period of tolerance began after 912, wherein the Jews of Al-Andalus prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Southern Iberia became an asylum for the oppressed Jews of other countries.
Notes:
711 AD: Muslim invaders crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to conquer most of Spain.
Great cities of Andalusia, or southern Spain, were Sevilla, Granada and Cordoba.
Arabs controlled much of Spain from about 700 AD to almost 1500 AD.
* architecture (Alhambra Palace)
* science (astronomy, medicine)
* music and dance (guitarra, flamenco dance)
* Literature, esp. poetry.
The Crusades, app 1100 to 1300 AD, saw the French and English armies going to Jerusalem to fight Muslims over control of the Holy Land.
The Spanish Inquisition:
The word inquisition (from the Latin: inquisitio) is the act of inquiring. It was broadly used in law, before the Medieval Inquisition, to refer to a common law procedure of inquiring into a matter, investigating, usually through interrogation, and by use of force. Over time, it was gradually associated with judging heresy against Christianity.
The reconquest of Spain from the Moors resulted in a relatively peaceful multi-religious society, but violent anti-Judaism ensued and Jews converted en masse to the Catholic faith. Some of these conversos were suspected of not being sincere converts and the Alhambra Decree in 1492 ordered all Jews to leave their kingdoms, making about 40,000 Jews leave.
Sixtus IV later accused the Spanish inquisition of being overzealous, accused the monarchs for being greedy and issued a commend to stop it, but he was pressured into withdrawing the restriction.
During the 16th century the main target became Protestants. In time converts from Islam and Moriscos were also persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition. Other crimes were also taken up in these tribunals such as Superstitions, heretical propositions, Sodomy, Bigamy and solicitation.
The Spanish Inquisition was an institution at the service of the monarchy.
The Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) , who ruled between 711 and 1492, are commonly known as the Moors. The territory, which they called "Al Andalus", initially included much of Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France.
The word Moors is a corrupted word referring to the people who came from Morocco (Mauri). Later, other words such as Moriscos and Mudejares were used.
The golden age of al-Andalus: crops produced using irrigation, along with food imported from from the Middle East, provided the area around Córdoba and some other Andalusī cities with an agricultural economic sector by far the most advanced in western Europe.
Among European cities, Córdoba, with a population of perhaps 500,000, was second only to Constantinople in size and prosperity.
Within the Islamic world, Córdoba was one of the leading cultural centres. The work of its most important philosophers and scientists (notably Ibn Rushd ("Averroes") had a major influence on the intellectual life of medieval western Europe.
Muslims and non-Muslims often came from abroad to study in the famous libraries and universities of al-Andalus. This transmission was to have a significant impact on the formation of the European Renaissance.
The Caliphate treated non-Muslims differently at different times. The longest period of tolerance began after 912, wherein the Jews of Al-Andalus prospered, devoting themselves to the service of the Caliphate of Cordoba, to the study of the sciences, and to commerce and industry, especially to trading in silk and slaves, in this way promoting the prosperity of the country. Southern Iberia became an asylum for the oppressed Jews of other countries.
Notes:
711 AD: Muslim invaders crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to conquer most of Spain.
Great cities of Andalusia, or southern Spain, were Sevilla, Granada and Cordoba.
Arabs controlled much of Spain from about 700 AD to almost 1500 AD.
* architecture (Alhambra Palace)
* science (astronomy, medicine)
* music and dance (guitarra, flamenco dance)
* Literature, esp. poetry.
The Crusades, app 1100 to 1300 AD, saw the French and English armies going to Jerusalem to fight Muslims over control of the Holy Land.
The Spanish Inquisition:
The word inquisition (from the Latin: inquisitio) is the act of inquiring. It was broadly used in law, before the Medieval Inquisition, to refer to a common law procedure of inquiring into a matter, investigating, usually through interrogation, and by use of force. Over time, it was gradually associated with judging heresy against Christianity.
The reconquest of Spain from the Moors resulted in a relatively peaceful multi-religious society, but violent anti-Judaism ensued and Jews converted en masse to the Catholic faith. Some of these conversos were suspected of not being sincere converts and the Alhambra Decree in 1492 ordered all Jews to leave their kingdoms, making about 40,000 Jews leave.
Sixtus IV later accused the Spanish inquisition of being overzealous, accused the monarchs for being greedy and issued a commend to stop it, but he was pressured into withdrawing the restriction.
During the 16th century the main target became Protestants. In time converts from Islam and Moriscos were also persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition. Other crimes were also taken up in these tribunals such as Superstitions, heretical propositions, Sodomy, Bigamy and solicitation.
The Spanish Inquisition was an institution at the service of the monarchy.
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