Tag Archives: French

This Epic PBS Documentary Shows How Creepily Little Has Changed Since World War I

by AnnettHoliman Posted on April 1, 2017

Mother Jones

I was never that much of a history buff, so it’s pretty rare for me to sit down and watch a documentary about a war that ended before my mom was born. But I’m rethinking my slacker ways after watching The Great War, a captivating new series premiering April 10 on PBS’ American Experience.

The history of this nation’s involvement in World War I is as fascinating as it is unsettling. The Great War also was our global coming of age, the beginning of America’s transformation into a nation deeply engaged in world affairs and conflicts. Perhaps what struck me most about the three-part, six-hour series was the familiarity of so many of its themes—a sense of déjà vu that left me feeling like even those of us who know our history are doomed to repeat it.

Here are 10 big takeaways from the series to accompany this exclusive clip (above) about the wartime crackdown on dissent.

1. America was as polarized a century ago as it is today. In 1917, the country was split over race relations, voting rights, domestic politics, our place in the world, and whether we should be fighting foreign wars at all.

2. The “great” war was so not great. Like all big conflicts, World War I had its inspiring tales of duty, bravery, and heroism, but the primary narrative was one of staggering deprivation and devastation. By the time America came in, some 15 million soldiers and civilians were already dead. (The 1918 flu pandemic, made worse by the war, would kill millions more.) Beyond the bullets and shells, the Germans introduced frightening new weapons including mustard gas, which was soon adopted by the Allies. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, US soldiers fighting the Germans lost an average of 550 men per day for 47 straight days. Three times that many were wounded. “It was, and remains,” notes one commentator, “the bloodiest battle America has ever been involved in.” But the longest conflict we’ve ever been involved in is still happening—over in Afghanistan.

“First to Fight” US Marines in 1918 U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Publicity Bureau

3. Immigrants were scapegoated. Sound familiar? With Americans being shipped overseas to backstop French and British forces against the Kaiser’s army, German Americans became the bad guys at home. They were forced to register with the federal government. German language and songs were banned from schools. There were stein-smashing events, and citizens were encouraged to report those they suspected of disloyalty. Anyone deemed pro-German might be beaten, tarred and feathered, hauled to an internment camp, or even lynched. Now we have anti-Muslim travel orders, rising hate crimes, and an anti-immigrant president who supports the notion of a Muslim registry—during the campaign, a Trump surrogate cited internment camps as a precedent. This is a slippery slope, people.

4. You were either with us or against us. Remember how the politicians who refused to fall in line with George W. Bush’s post-9/11 crackdown on civil liberties (and his move to invade Iraq) were attacked for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Rewind to 1917: At first reluctant to enter the war, President Woodrow Wilson went all in, brooking no dissent from the public. Conformity was enforced by means of federally funded propaganda, as well as vigilante groups that, with the blessing of the Department of Justice, conducted “slacker raids.” Police, too, conducted mass roundups, locking up draft evaders, conscientious objectors, and war critics such as socialist leader Eugene Debs. Hutterite religious objectors were tortured (some to death) at Leavenworth military prison.

New York City Preparedness Parade (May 1916) Library of Congress

5. Laws were passed to justify repression. With today’s Republican lawmakers proposing harsh penalties for peaceful protest activities such as blocking traffic, it’s instructive to recall the Espionage and Sedition acts that Congress passed in 1917 and 1918 at the urging of President Wilson. (One of the film’s featured historians, Michael Kazin, calls Wilson “both the great Democrat and one of the most oppressive figures in American history.”) Used to prosecute more than 2,000 Americans, “these two acts really become tools to shut up people who refuse to be quiet about their opposition to the war, especially left-wing organizations—socialists, the IWW International Workers of the World,” historian Jennifer Keene explains. Simply griping to a colleague about food rationing might get a man locked up. “For every prosecution,” adds historian Christopher Capozzola, “there may be tens, hundreds, thousands of ‘friendly’ visits by government agents warning someone not to say what they said or write what they wrote.”

6. World War I spawned a huge propaganda machine. Wilson enlisted marketing guru George Creel to sell the war and made him the head of a new federal Committee on Public Information. Creel was masterful in controlling the narrative of the conflict at home and spreading the view that if you weren’t actively down with the war effort, then you were disloyal. Years later, the administration of George H.W. Bush relied on PR firms to gin up public support for Operation Desert Storm. You might recall the fabricated story of Iraqi troops ripping babies from their incubators at a Kuwait hospital and leaving them to die—brought to you by a Kuwaiti government front group that hired companies such as Hill & Knowlton to make its case for America to go after Saddam.

A 1917 propaganda poster James Montgomery Flagg/Library of Congress

7. America betrayed her black soldiers. The documentary, whose commentators include several black historians, does a fabulous job of showing how the war was transformative for African American soldiers. Handed over to fight hellish trench battles under French command, they were treated, if not as equals, then at least as worthy comrades by their white French counterparts. The returning veterans were no longer content to accept the racist status quo in America; hundreds were lynched for resisting white supremacy. The “red summer” of 1919 was “a wave of racial violence unparalleled in United States history,” notes historian Chad Williams. “It was a horrific statement about how the aspirations of African Americans were going to be met with violent resistance from white people.” Thousands of blacks wrote to the White House begging for help, but they were given the cold shoulder. President Wilson, at once a global visionary and a small-minded bigot, refused to acknowledge the slaughter, and America remained as violently racist as it ever was. But the new perspective and sense of entitlement among black veterans planted seeds for a civil rights movement yet to come. America, of course, is still pretty darn racist.

The Harlem Hellfighters land in New York City. National Archives

8. The war was a turning point for women’s voting rights. The suffragists of the time, led by Alice Paul, were deft at turning Wilson’s war rhetoric against him: Even as young Americans died to “make the world safe for democracy,” they said, Wilson was stifling democracy at home. Anti-government protests had all but evaporated once America declared war, but Paul and others continued their daily vigil outside the White House gates. Even after Wilson had the women locked up, they continued to make him look bad by launching a hunger strike. Wilson eventually capitulated. Congress approved the 19th Amendment in 1919—the states ratified it in 1920. (Now it’s people of color who are stuck fighting—yet again—to protect their voting rights.)

9. Petty bipartisan squabbling ruined everything. After the immense effort of negotiating the terms of peace in Europe and selling the treaty to the American public, the president let his petty rivalry with Republican Henry Cabot Lodge doom the treaty’s ratification by the Senate. What if Wilson had let the pact proceed with Lodge’s inconsequential amendments attached? Or what if he’d brought the Republican leader along with him to Paris when he negotiated the treaty? What if America had ratified the treaty and stayed intimately involved in the postwar order? “Just what if?” asks historian Margaret MacMillan. Her implication is clear: World War II might never have happened.

A women’s peace parade in 1914, before America joined the war Library of Congress

10. Hillary Clinton actually would have been our second female president. Shortly after Congress nixed Wilson’s hard-fought treaty, the president suffered a massive stroke. His inner circle covered up the severity of his condition for a year and a half, while first lady Edith Wilson essentially served as a covert chief executive: “A handful of people in the White House,” says Wilson biographer A. Scott Berg, “engaged in the greatest conspiracy in American history.” Yet.

Continue reading:  

This Epic PBS Documentary Shows How Creepily Little Has Changed Since World War I

Posted in alo, bigo, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Epic PBS Documentary Shows How Creepily Little Has Changed Since World War I

These Are the Books We’re Giving Our Friends This Year

by Monique7546 Posted on December 3, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Every year, Mother Jones receives hundreds of worthy books, but there are always a handful that truly stand out, the ones we end up foisting on friends and family. Well, friends and family, here you go, in no particular order. Also, be sure and check out the Best Cookbooks post by food and ag writer Tom Philpott, and stay tuned for photo book picks from photo editor Mark Murrmann and the year’s best music from critic Jon Young (on Sunday).

The Hopefuls, by Jennifer Close. Beth, the twentysomething protagonist of Jennifer Close’s wryly observed new novel, is an aspiring journalist loving life in New York City. But when her husband, Matt, gets a job in the Obama administration, Beth reluctantly agrees to follow him to DC. Thanks to Close’s eye for detail, The Hopefuls is like a still life of Washington in 2008. She masterfully captures both the contagious enthusiasm and wonky snobbery of DC’s rising political stars and their hangers-on. One character is forever telling anecdotes about senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, pretentiously referring to him as “Ax.” Another refers to Obama as “the senator”—a subtle humble brag that he’s worked for the president since way back when. Beth is miserable in this dreary social circle—until she and her husband click with a charismatic couple from Texas. And before she knows it, Beth herself is swept into this world of political strivers. Ultimately, The Hopefuls is as much about friendship as it is about politics—and about what happens when the two collide. —Kiera Butler, senior editor

My Father, the Pornographer, by Chris Offutt. This memoir is not a salacious romp, as the cover might suggest, but a slow-burning examination of Chris Offutt’s strained relationship with his late dad, a prolific author of smut and sci-fi. Offutt focuses less on the giant pile of kinky material he inherited than how it affected his childhood, his family, and his sense of self. His final plunge into his father’s most secret, and shameful, obsessions is worth the wait. —Dave Gilson, senior editor

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, by Mary Roach. This latest book from the perpetually curious Mary Roach looks at the weird yet deadly serious science of keeping soldiers alive. In a globe-trotting tour of labs, training grounds, and a nuclear sub, Roach explores how fighting men and women sweat, sleep, and poop. “No one wins a medal” for this obscure, often gross, survival research, Roach writes. “And maybe someone should.” Like her previous books Gulp and Stiff, Grunt oozes bodily fluids, flippant footnotes, and weapons-grade wordplay. —D.G.

The Arab of the Future 2: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1984-1985, by Riad Sattouf & Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63, by Marcelino Truong. Two of the most affecting memoirs of the year are graphic novels by French cartoonists who grew up astride two cultures. The Arab of the Future 2 picks up where its predecessor left off: Riad Sattouf, the adorable six-year-old son of a Syrian father and a French mother, is adjusting to his new life in his father’s village outside Homs in the mid-1980s. Sattouf’s bubbly illustrations belie the bleakness of his surroundings, and the violence and misogyny he witnesses.

Marcelino Truong’s beautifully illustrated tale follows him and his two siblings in their move to Saigon as the Vietnam War heats up. While the kids are enthralled by the war and oblivious to its horrors, their French-born mother breaks down as she sees just how quickly things are falling apart. The two authors’ artistic and narrative sensibilities differ, but their work is united by common themes: surreal childhoods amid geopolitical conflict (Sattouf and his playmates battle the Israeli Army; Truong and his cousins pretend to fight the Viet Cong) and idealistic fathers (Sattouf’s dad is a Qaddafi- and Saddam-admiring pan-Arabist, while Truong’s is an official in the US-backed South Vietnamese government) who are blind to the strife afflicting their countries—and families. Read together or separately, these comics pack a surprising punch. —D.G.

Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File, by John Edgar Wideman. In his first book in more than a decade, the acclaimed African American author and Brown University professor John Edgar Wideman explores the saga of Emmett Till’s father, who was court-martialed and hanged by the United States military well before the notorious lynching of his son by white racists in Mississippi. Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Wideman obtains records from Louis Till’s military trial and interrogates the file from every angle—filling in the gaps with his own vivid imagination and recollections. Part history, part memoir, part mystery, part fiction, this insightful book reveals as much about the author as it does about his subject. As Wideman put it to me in a recent interview, “To write a story about Louis Till puts me on trial.” —Michael Mechanic, senior editor

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. You’ve probably heard plenty about 2016’s National Book Award winner for fiction, but I’ll pile on anyway. Whitehead’s riveting slavery saga reimagines the underground railroad as a literal thing, but he doesn’t dwell too heavily on that plot device. The story follows a pair of escapees from a Georgia plantation as they move north along the railroad, pursued by a determined slave catcher. Among other things, they stumble across a bizarre eugenics experiment in South Carolina and a vile campaign of ethnic cleansing in North Carolina. Whitehead’s character-driven tale brings into visceral relief the horrors, the cruelty, the stark inhumanity of an economy based on captive black labor. And he reminds us, too, of the grim fate that awaited Southern whites brave enough to oppose the system. —M.M.

The Fortunes, by Peter Ho Davies. Given the extraordinary success of Chinese Americans today, it’s easy to forget how tough white society made things for their forebears who flocked here during the Gold Rush or who were imported as cheap labor for railroad companies—only to later be scapegoated and officially excluded by an act of Congress that would remain in force until 1943 (just in time for the interning of Japanese Americans). Davies’ outstanding new novel reminds us how things were (and still are, if the 2016 election is any indication). The experiences of Davies’ characters—a poor laundry boy hired on as a railroad magnate’s valet, an ambitious Chinese American starlet—highlight the tightrope walk of maintaining one’s culture while striving for acceptance in a resentful society. The Fortunes feels particularly timely now that we’ve handed the White House keys to a man who threatens to register and exclude Muslim immigrants, and to deport Americans (for really, what else can we honestly call them?) brought here without papers as toddlers. —M.M.

While the City Slept: A Love Lost to Violence and a Young Man’s Descent Into Madness, by Eli Sanders. One night in 2009, a disturbed young man named Isaiah Kalebu entered a Seattle home through an open window and raped and stabbed two women, killing one. He was sentenced to life in prison, but local journalist Eli Sanders, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the case, kept digging. While the City Slept, his compassionate examination of the lives that collided that night, relates how a bright but abused boy grew into a violent criminal and, as one psychiatrist put it, “became his illness.” The book plays double duty as tribute to those whose lives were upended and a meticulous indictment of the way we fail fellow citizens with serious mental disorders. —Madison Pauly, assistant editor

Pumpkinflowers, by Matti Friedman. This is a 21st-century war story, with all of the IEDs, propaganda videos, jihadi groups we’re accustomed to—but one told in the restrained, introspective style of the World War I writers Friedman turned to for inspiration. It’s partly an engrossing personal story, partly a history of a forgotten chapter in Middle East conflict, and one of the best-written books I’ve read in years. —Max J. Rosenthal, reporter

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi. This ambitious debut novel sparked a bidding war and landed Gyasi a seven-figure contract just one year after she graduated from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Following seven generations across two continents, Gyasi manages to fit the many stages of slavery’s plunder into a relatively slim volume, to dazzling and often devastating effect. Though some of the storylines unravel a bit toward the novel’s end, the emphasis on global slavery’s ramifications in West Africa, told with rich and lively characters and language that hums, makes this well worth the commitment. —Maddie Oatman, story editor

Real Food, Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It, by Larry Olmsted. We’ve all been told to steer clear of artificial ingredients, but how much do you know about fake—meaning fraudulent—food? Turns out, it’s everywhere, including in your kitchen right now. Olive oil, parmesan cheese, fish fillets, red wine; it would seem the more scrumptious the victual, the more likely it is to be a sham. Olmsted gives us the lay of this seedy landscape with momentum and aplomb. He demystifies the process by which fake ingredients end up in your shopping cart, explains why some of these deceitful foods could be a real threat to your health, and sheds a light on the government policies and shortsighted commercialism that landed them there. —M.O.

Swing Time, by Zadie Smith. Award-winning author Zadie Smith’s fifth novel interweaves two narratives. One involves the unnamed narrator’s childhood friendship, wrought by a shared passion for dance. The other one revolves around the narrator’s adult travels to Africa in the employ of a pop star as she grapples with her own biracial identity. Penned in Smith’s inimitable, winding style, Swing Time looks unflinchingly at race, gender, parenting, love, and friendship. In places, I found the book an unnerving reminder of my own childhood, of parents who seemed invincible and maddeningly certain about the course of their offspring’s future. —Becca Andrews, assistant editor

March: Book Three, by Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell. Police brutality, segregation, voting rights: Many of the big issues of the 1960s are alive and well today. The March graphic-history trilogy tells the story of the civil rights movement through the eyes of Rep. John Lewis, onetime chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—a group at the center of the struggle. In poignant detail, the March books, totally 600 pages, put us at the heart of the battles over desegregation and black suffrage. We meet the movement’s leaders and witness the ugly local clashes leading up to the March on Washington. In the third installment, which earned a 2016 National Book Award, the beatings and defiance of “Bloody Sunday” stand in sharp contrast to Lewis’ pride on President Barack Obama’s inauguration day. The book, and the trilogy, offer lessons for modern strivers on how far we’ve come—while serving as a reminder of how far we have yet to go. —Edwin Rios, reporter

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. In a tome filled with heartbreak, Desmond, a sociologist who teaches at Harvard, embeds with eight families who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads in the segregated city of Milwaukee. Rich in history and bolstered by engrossing research, Evicted vividly captures with empathy the lives of those caught up in deep poverty as they reel from the consequences of losing their homes. In doing so, it elevates the importance of affordable housing in today’s society. “Housing is deeply implicated in causing poverty in America today,” Desmond told me in March, “and we have to do something.” —E.R.

A Rage for Order: The Middle East in turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS, by Robert F. Worth. This is not your typical Middle East manuscript—no bird’s eye view of battlefield advancements or policy analysis on the region in collapse. Rather, Robert F. Worth, the longtime correspondent for the New York Times, managed to be on the ground seemingly everywhere that mattered during the zenith of the Arab Spring, and takes us a journey inside the lives of those whose hopes rode on the Arab Spring’s promise and whose lives changed—or ended—forever once the popular uprisings collapsed into insurgencies and civil war. It’s a beautifully written, moving account that brings humanity and heart to a region typically only considered in terms of conflict and chaos. —Bryan Schatz, reporter

God Save Sex Pistols, by Johan Kugelberg, with Jon Savage and Glenn Terry. Curator, author, and all-around underground know-it-all Johan Kugelberg released the end-all Sex Pistols ephemera collection earlier this year, and just in time; soon after, Joe Corre, son of punk impressarios Malcolm McClaren and Dame Vivien Westwood, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistol’s first single by burning more than $6 million worth of rare, original Sex Pistols and UK punk memorabilia. Though the original artifacts were lost to Corre’s piqued sense of anti-nostalgia, God Save Sex Pistols lovingly showcases photos, letters, flyers, records, posters, shirts—everything related to the band that once terrified parents and politicians. The book also serves as a more focused compendium to Kugelberg & Savages’ excellent 2012 book, Punk: An Aesthethic. —Mark Murrmann, photo editor

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong. Few writers know how to explain science clearly, and even fewer science writers compose genuinely gorgeous prose. Ed Yong is that unicorn. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us is the most elegant guide I’ve seen to our still-primitive understanding of the microbiome—the gazillions of tiny critters living within us. Like Nietzsche peering into a microscope, Yong urges us to think beyond “good” and “bad” microbes: “These terms belong in children’s stories. They are ill-suited for describing the messy, fractious, contextual relationships of the natural world.” Context is everything. “The same microbes could be good in the gut, but dangerous in the blood,” Yong writes. One of the many functions of mother’s milk, one scientist informs him, may be to “provide babies with a starter’s pack of symbiotic viruses”—and that’s a good thing. “Every one of us is a zoo in our own right—a colony enclosed within a single body,” he writes. “A multi-species collection. An entire world.” —Tom Philpott, food and ag correspondent

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank. His forward-looking autopsy may seem like a contradiction in terms, but Thomas Frank had the dirge of the Democratic Party cued up before primary season. Still, the shock of November 8 catapulted the virtuosic Listen, Liberal from insightful to downright prophetic. Frank meticulously charts the Democrats’ suicidal slide from a party of the factory floor to one of late-summer galas on Martha’s Vineyard. He hits on all the major missteps—the decline of middle-class wages, the bank bailouts, the trade deals, the technocracy (oh, the technocracy!)—all of which were later parceled out by the flabbergasted into grasping post-election think pieces. Frank’s book is lacerating and urgent, but also titillating, witty, and downright fun to read. It will no doubt give some establishment Dems the strong urge to throw the book into the ocean—indeed, their proximity to the coast and ability to conceivably do just that is part of the problem. This, for my money, is the best nonfiction of 2016. —Alex Sammon, editorial fellow

Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays, by Cynthia Ozick. Narratives of decline seem to be particularly in, but no one can render this notion quite as beautifully as Ozick. At 88, she’s been around the literary block, and she can’t help but lament the state of the American traditions of reading and writing. “What’s impossible not to notice,” as she put it to me earlier this year, “is the diminution of American prose.” To read Ozick is enriching for her startling vocabulary alone, though her intellectual force is also something to behold. This essay collection stakes out the critical cultural importance of literary criticism, and does so with the linguistic expertise of a poet—peaking with a vivid disemboweling of the term “Kafkaesque,” for all its faux-literary worth. One thing, for Ozick, is certain: The road to cultural aridity is paved with 3.5-star Amazon reviews. —A.S.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. If you want to understand how Donald Trump took over the GOP, and how he won so many Rust Belt counties that voted for Barack Obama, this is a good place to start. Vance uses the story of his childhood in a dying steel town to highlight what he sees as cultural shortcomings and political delusions among the region’s white working class. “We talk about the value of hard work,” he writes, “but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese.” There’s plenty to disagree with in Vance’s analysis—his insistence on blaming “welfare queens” for their financial problems, for example. Still, for all of us asking, “What just happened to my country?” Hillbilly Elegy provides some invaluable clues. —Jeremy Schulman, senior project manager, Climate Desk

Original article: 

These Are the Books We’re Giving Our Friends This Year

Posted in alo, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Safer, Smith's, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These Are the Books We’re Giving Our Friends This Year

How Donald Trump Could Spark a Trade War With Europe

by MayeskiLatouf679 Posted on November 14, 2016

Mother Jones

For all his talk of renegotiating trade deals and cracking down on China, Donald Trump probably didn’t bargain for a trade war with the United States’ closest allies in Europe. But it’s not out of the question.

On Sunday, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy suggested imposing a carbon tax on US goods if Trump walks away from the Paris climate agreement. Sarkozy is currently competing for the presidential nomination of France’s center-right Republican party.

Under the Paris agreement, which went into effect earlier this month, countries pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. During the campaign, Trump pledged to “cancel” the deal.

Sarkozy said that if Trump abandons the agreement, European countries should impose a 1-3 percent tax on American goods, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. The goal would be to protect European businesses that will be abiding by the global climate agreement from being undercut by US industries that won’t be subject to emissions limits.

It’s a striking position for Sarkozy, who sparked controversy earlier this year when he reportedly suggested that humans aren’t to blame for climate change.

Original post:

How Donald Trump Could Spark a Trade War With Europe

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Donald Trump Could Spark a Trade War With Europe

But If You Don’t Learn Cursive, How Will You Read the Declaration of Independence in the Original?

by KatherineMagana Posted on September 24, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

If pen retailers and state legislators are to be believed, cursive handwriting is facing an existential threat. Since the advent of the Common Core standards—which emphasize keyboard skills over nicely shaped P’s and Q’s—it’s been common knowledge for years that teachers are abandoning cursive in droves, spending classroom time instead on new technology and typing.

But lately, fancy handwriting is having somewhat of a comeback. Louisiana’s governor signed a law in June requiring cursive instruction all the way through grade 12. Mississippi’s education department recently added script to its standards. And starting this school year, third graders in Alabama are required to write legibly in cursive under the newly passed Lexi’s Law. State Rep. Dickie Drake named the Alabama bill after his granddaughter, who told him when she was in first grade that she wanted to learn “real writing.”

The jury is still out on whether learning script, not just print, improves children’s cognition. (There’s little proof to date that it does.) Meanwhile, scientists are inching closer to handwriting’s true existential threat: a mind-reading machine that turns thoughts into written language via a “brain to text” interface. Here’s a primer on how the technology and culture of handwriting has evolved over time.

3200 B.C.

With stylus and clay tablets, ancient Mesopotamians create abstract symbols to represent syllables of their spoken language.

600s

Quill pens and parchment paper take hold in Europe. Drippy ink discourages pen lifting, hence cursive.

1440s

Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press forces scribes to pivot to teaching penmanship.

c. 1712

A popular copybook by George Bickham teaches farmers and merchants to write in a “round” hand. Gentlemen of the era employ an italic script, while accomplished women practice “ladies’ roman.” (In general, only fairly well-off white males are taught to write.)

1740

South Carolina’s Negro Act makes it a crime to teach slaves to write: “Suffering them to be employed in writing may be attended with great inconveniences.” Other colonies (and later, states) follow suit.

1776

John Hancock’s “John Hancock” appears prominently on the Declaration of Independence.

1848

Educator Platt Rogers Spencer urges pupils to contemplate nature’s curves while learning his ornate script, soon to be the hand of choice for merchants (including Ford and Coca-Cola) and schools in most states.

1865

Denmark’s Rasmus Malling-Hansen introduces the first commercial typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball.

Malling-Hansen Society

1880

Alonzo Cross’ patented “stylographic pen” holds its own ink.

1888

Irish immigrant John Robert Gregg invents a shorthand method that will eventually be taught in countless US high schools.

1894

With handwriting under threat by typewriters, Austin Palmer introduces a smaller, faster writing style, taught via militaristic “drills.” His 1912 textbook on the Palmer Method sells more than 1 million copies. (Spen­cerian script is history.)

1904

French psychologist Alfred Binet popularizes handwriting analysis as a window into the writer’s traits. He goes on to invent the IQ test.

1913

Congress greenlights the use of handwriting as forensic evidence in court.

1935

STF/AFP/Getty

The man convicted (and later executed) based on ransom notes for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby laments, “Dat handwriting is the worstest thing against me.”

1944

László József Bíró markets the first ballpoint pen.

1958

The Bic ballpoint hits US stores, turning pens—once luxury goods—into a cheap commodity.

1961

The signature of US Treasurer Elizabeth Rudel Smith on paper currency invites public scorn: Her “t”s are “crossed belatedly, like a feminine afterthought,” snarks a Chicago Tribune writer. The New York Times seizes on the occasion to bemoan the “lost art of handwriting.”

c.1964

From a Louisiana poll test: “Write every other word in this first line and print every third word in same line (original type smaller and first line ended at comma) but capitalize the fifth word that you write.”

1977

A pen makers’ trade group launches National Handwriting Day even as PC makers including Apple and Commodore begin selling the computer keyboards that presage handwriting’s slow, inevitable decline.

1984

The National Council of Teachers of English condemns the practice of making naughty kids write lines, because it “causes students to dislike an activity necessary to their intellectual development and career success.”

Fox

1996

Researchers claim they’ve debunked the “conventional wisdom” that doctors have worse handwriting than other health professionals do.

2000

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles urges “handwriting-challenged” MDs to take a penmanship class, even as a key medical journal blasts handwritten case notes as “a dinosaur long overdue for extinction.”

2001

First-class mail usage hits its peak—only to plummet 40 percent by 2015.

2010

Common Core standards, soon to be adopted by most states, emphasize early typing skills but make no mention of cursive. Parents and educators flip out. “They’re not teaching cursive writing,” conservative TV host Glenn Beck thunders, “because the easiest way to make somebody a slave is dumb them down.”

2012

Scientists find that the brains of preliterate kids respond like a reader’s brain when they write their ABCs, but not when they type or trace the letters; another research team reports that college students who transcribed lectures on their laptops recalled more information than those who took notes by hand.

2014

Bic launches a “Fight For Your Write” campaign—”because writing makes us all awesome!”

2016
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama mandate instruction of handwriting in public schools. Without it, supporters argue, kids wouldn’t be able to sign their names or read the Constitution. Over at Motherboard, Kaleigh Rogers counters that cursive needs to “join its former companion—the quill and inkwell—in the annals of history where it belongs.”

View original: 

But If You Don’t Learn Cursive, How Will You Read the Declaration of Independence in the Original?

Posted in alo, Casio, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on But If You Don’t Learn Cursive, How Will You Read the Declaration of Independence in the Original?

Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee

by JeannaEdmonson1 Posted on September 12, 2016

Theyre calling it the Clooney effect. Single-use coffee pods are flying off supermarket shelves at a faster rate than ever before, possibly aided by actor George Clooneys persuasive good looks in European Nespresso advertisements since 2006 and, more recently, in the United States.

Kantar Worldpanelrecently announced that coffee pod sales of brands such as Nespresso, Tassimo, and Dolce Gusto (owned by Nescaf) willsoon overtake standard roast and ground coffee after an increase of 29.5 per cent over the last 12 months, bringing sales to 137.5 million. During the same period, sales of roast and ground varieties rose by only 2.5 per cent to 167 million.(The Telegraph) In its report, based on data from 986 million households across 35 countries, Kantar goes on to explain that the global market has expanded 16 percent in the past year, with particularly strong growth in France and Spain.

Photo Credit: Daniel Lobo/Flickr

This is sad news for those of us who wish that more sustainable consumer practices would infiltrate the mainstream. There is nothing green about coffee pods, no matter what the manufacturers tell you. The recycling claims aremostly bogus, as the used pods are a mix of plastic, aluminum foil, and coffee grounds that must be separated by hand in order for recycling to occur. It remains, as Lloyd wrote earlier, design for unsustainability, regardless of how manufacturers want to spin it.

Shipping pods across the country to make the world’s most expensive compost out of the coffee and lawn chairs out of the plastic doesn’t make a lot of sense. As for the people who try to separate the components themselves, there are not that many of them; if they are willing to do that, they probably have the time and energy to make a real pot of coffee.

Change did seem imminent. Earlier this year thecity of Hamburg, Germany, banned the purchase of all coffee pods using council money in an attempt to reduce waste. A YouTube video called Kill the K-Cup got many others thinking about where their used pods end up long after the cup of coffee has been finished. Even the Keurig cup inventor hasexpressed regretat unleashing such an environmental nightmare into the world. And yet, Kantar reveals that sales continue to climb, likely due to the sheer convenience of having to do nothing but press a button.

Coffee capsules have helped create the holy grail of marketing: a new category combining the indulgence of caf culture with the convenience and speed of the capsules.

Nespresso advertises on a historic building in Turin, Italy. Photo Credit: Lloyd Alter

This, despite the fact that pods are ridiculously expensive compared to high quality beans. Pods can work out to cost between 30 and 50 dollars per pound, which is a vast difference from the $16 I shell out every couple weeks for a pound of fairtrade, shade-grown beans.The Telegraph citesKantar analyst Ed John: An average cup of regular instant coffee costs only 2 pence (3 U.S. cents). A caf-style instant is 17p (23) while the fastest growing sectorpodscost an average of 31p (41) per cup.

Pods makes no sense for any reason other than convenience, and even that could be argued: its not that difficult to boil water and push down a French press. But, like so many other environmentally destructive practices, people need to be willing to put in a tiny bit more effort in order to lessen their footprint significantly and yet, Kantars findings show that people really dont seem to care. How sad.

Written by Katherine Martinko.This post originally appeared onTreeHugger.

Photo Credit: Tim Lossen/Flickr

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

See more here: 

Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee

Posted in FF, GE, Keurig, LAI, LG, Nespresso, ONA, peroxide, PUR, Radius, Tassimo, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee

12 Ways to Get Rid of Aggressive Weeds Without Resorting to Roundup

by Arnette0309 Posted on May 25, 2016

You dont have to resort to chemical herbicides in order to get rid of invasive weeds. Safer options exist that will work just as effectively. They may take a bit more persistence, but the benefits of organic control methods far outweigh the negative health effects of chemical pesticides.

So whats the big deal about Roundup? Its a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide, which means it kills most plants that it comes in contact with. Roundup is also the most widely used herbicide in the world.

Glyphosate is the active herbicidal ingredient in Roundup. Many genetically modified food crops, such as corn and soybeans, have been scientifically designed to be resistant to glyphosate. Farmers can then spray Roundup on their fields and kill all the weeds, leaving only the food crop standing. This greatly simplifies weed control, but it also means the food crops are literally covered with Roundup. And so is any food you eat thats made from these crops, like corn chips, bread, and other packaged food.

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that glyphosate residue in our food may enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. This can lead to disruption of normal body functions and the development of diseases such as Parkinsons disease, infertility and cancers.

A French study also found that a filler ingredient used in Roundup, polyethoxylated tallowamine, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the main herbicidal ingredient glyphosate.

We’re just starting to understand the serious long-term health and environmental effects of Roundup and other popular herbicides. The less we use these chemicals, the better. Try some of these effective organic weed-control methods instead.

1. Mulching.

Covering the soil with an extra layer of organic matter can smother and inhibit weeds, as well as prevent new seeds from germinating. You can mulch with compost, bark, wood chips, newspaper, cardboard, grass clippings, straw, or most other organic matter. But make sure not to get hay, which can have a lot of unwanted seeds. You can also put ground cloth, old shower curtains, or other thick material underneath a pathway made of wood chips or gravel to prevent weeds from growing through.

2. Hand-Digging.

Manual removal with a shovel, hoe, or other tool is an effective spot-treatment for basically all weeds. Many weeds may come back and need to be dug again. But consistent hand-weeding will greatly reduce their populations. When young weeds are promptly dug out, they wont be able to seed and reproduce. And regularly digging up weeds with tap roots, such as dandelions or thistles, will weaken the root and eventually kill the plant.

3. Competition.

Weeds cant take hold if theres no space for them. Try planting dense groundcovers and perennial plants in ornamental beds. The shade and heavy root systems of trees and shrubs can naturally prevent weeds from growing underneath. If youre battling weeds in your lawn, make sure you use grass varieties appropriate for shade, drought, or other difficult areas where a regular lawn might not grow well, leaving openings for unwanted visitors.

4. Regulate Food and Water.

The nutrients and irrigation you give your garden will encourage weeds as much as the plants you want to grow. Only give your plants what they need. Well-established trees, shrubs and perennial plants can often do well without a lot of extra fertilizer and irrigation. Vegetables may need a bit more, but you can be selective. Heavy feeders can get extra compost, like squash and cucumbers. However, you can feed crops like root vegetables much less.

5. Solarize.

Solarizing involves covering an area of weeds with a heavy plastic sheet. This works best in full sun where the heat will collect under the sheet and literally bake the weeds. Leave the sheet in place for 4 to 6 weeks. Youll know its done when the weeds underneath are clearly brown and desiccated.

6. Limit Tilling and Digging.

Turning over the soil in your vegetable patch or other beds will bring new weed seeds to the surface. Experiment with the no-till method of gardening, where you try to disturb the soil as little as possible. For example, if youre seeding vegetables, only dig down as far as you need to plant the seeds instead of deeply digging or tilling the entire bed. The no-till method has also been shown to improve soil structure and fertility, as well as increase beneficial soil organisms.

7. Corn Gluten Meal.

Corn gluten meal is a powdery byproduct of the corn milling process thats been found to prevent weed seeds from germinating. Its often applied to lawns, or can be used in other garden areas. Its non-toxic to animals and you can buy certified organic corn gluten meal. If you cant find it in your local garden center, corn gluten meal is available online.

8. Vodka.

Try spraying a mix of 1 ounce vodka, 2 cups of water, and a couple drops of dish soap on weeds with good sun exposure. This will often dry them out and kill them. It doesnt work well in shady areas. Also be careful not to overspray onto any of your regular plants, the vodka will dry out whatever plants it hits.

9. Vinegar and Salt.

Regular 5 percent household vinegar can be used on its own against weeds. Its even better mixed with salt and dish soap. Mix 1 gallon of white vinegar with 1 cup of table salt and 1 tablespoon of liquid dish detergent. Put the mixture into a plastic spray bottle and spray directly on targeted weeds.

10. Soap.

The oil in soap naturally breaks down the surface of waxy or hairy weed leaves. Adding a few drops of liquid dish detergent to vinegar or vodka sprays will help it stay on the leaves and have the greatest impact.

11. Boiling Water.

Simply boil a kettle of water and pour it over any undesirable weeds to burn them. This works especially well for weeds growing in cracks of pavement or cement. The water will cool as it runs off to the sides of your pavement and wont hurt any plants along the border.

12. Flame Weeding.

This involves passing a flame over a weed briefly in order to fatally heat the plant tissues. A flame weeder is typically a wand connected to a propane tank. These may be carried at your local garden center or hardware store. Flaming will only kill the weed parts above the ground, not the roots, so you may need to flame your weeds a few times before theyre gone. Clearly, this should not be done during any dry spells when there is a risk of fire. Always follow the safety precautions that come with your flame throwing device.

Related
What to Plant, Weed and Prune in May
Yoga for Gardeners: Recover from the Garden on the Mat
How to Make Your Garden Wildlife-Friendly

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Source article: 

12 Ways to Get Rid of Aggressive Weeds Without Resorting to Roundup

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Safer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 12 Ways to Get Rid of Aggressive Weeds Without Resorting to Roundup

Chart of the Day: Americans Think Hard Work Is the Key to Success. Europeans, Not So Much.

by TomasObrien Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Here’s a fascinating result from the plucky pollsters at Pew Research:

I’m not surprised that the US ranks highest. But I am surprised at how much higher. Only a quarter of the French think that hard work is important for getting ahead in life? How about that. Even the famously diligent Germans clock in at only 49 percent.

Granted, in order to make the grade, you have to score this as 10 (or “10,” as Pew puts it) on a 0-10 scale. Maybe Europeans tend to score it as a 9—still pretty important, but not quite totally life-engulfing. Either way, though, apparently we Americans continue to believe in the importance of hard work a lot more than our Europeans peers. No 6-week vacations for us!

See original article here: 

Chart of the Day: Americans Think Hard Work Is the Key to Success. Europeans, Not So Much.

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chart of the Day: Americans Think Hard Work Is the Key to Success. Europeans, Not So Much.

Keurig’s new green move is as mediocre as K-Cups coffee

by EvonneAutry Posted on April 18, 2016

Keurig’s new green move is as mediocre as K-Cups coffee

By on 18 Apr 2016commentsShare

After literally a decade of trying, Keurig has finally found a way to address complaints about its product’s environmental impact: It’s made recyclable coffee pods, as the New York Times reports. Hooray. What heroes.

Keurig is the originator of the K-Cup, those single-serving coffee pods that create enough waste each year to wrap around the planet nearly 11 times. K-Cups have long provoked the ire of environmentalists, even inspiring a horror film in which an enormous K-Cup monster terrorizes city streets.

K-Cup monsters may only be the things of nightmares (and YouTube), but coffee pods truly are bad for the planet. K-Cups are made of impossible-to-recycle plastic and so the 9 billion units sold in 2015 alone languish in landfills. Even John Sylvan, the K-Cup’s inventor, has regrets about creating them. And let’s be real — the coffee’s not great either.

The problem with this development is that that even recyclable coffee pods are still wasteful. You don’t need a $100 device and special containers to make a cup of coffee; all you need is a fire, a cowboy hat, and a tin cup. Alternately, there are French presses, reusable filters, percolators, and your neighborhood espresso bar — all better options than K-Cups, recyclable or not.

If however, you cannot live without your precious coffee pods, they are on track to start rolling out by the end of the year. Just don’t forget to recycle.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

See the original post:

Keurig’s new green move is as mediocre as K-Cups coffee

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, hydroponics, Keurig, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Keurig’s new green move is as mediocre as K-Cups coffee

Photos From Around The World Capture the Outpouring of Support After the Brussels Attack

by ArturoHanran Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Early Tuesday morning, a series of terrorist attacks ripped across Brussels, the Belgian capitol, leaving at least 31 dead. We’re following live updates to the story here. Similar to the December massacre in Paris, the attacks were quickly followed by a public outpouring grief, sympathy and solidarity, taking the form of makeshift memorials and specially lit landmarks.

Here is a selection of reactions from Europe and around the world:

People light candles at a memorial set up outside the stock exchange in Brussels. Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

The pencils in the cartoon below are a reference to the terrorist attacks on the offices of French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, last January:

Pakistanis chant slogans during a rally to condemn the Brussels attack, in Multan, Pakistan. Asim Tanveer/AP

Link to article: 

Photos From Around The World Capture the Outpouring of Support After the Brussels Attack

Posted in alternative energy, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Photos From Around The World Capture the Outpouring of Support After the Brussels Attack

There’s Finally an Agreement to Stop the Fighting in Syria—and It’s Probably Doomed

by theacntnt1985-01 Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Less than two weeks after peace talks over the Syrian civil war abruptly ended, the International Syria Support Group—a body of about 20 countries and international organizations involved in the war, including the European Union and the United Nations—announced on Thursday that they had finally brokered the terms of a halt to the brutal war that has killed nearly half a million people. The “cessation of hostilities” between regime forces and rebel groups, if successful, would be the first general stop to the fighting in almost four years. It seemed to meet some of the Syrian opposition’s demands for humanitarian relief and a halt to Russian airstrikes against civilians and rebels. But none of this means the agreement is likely to succeed.

The International Syria Support Group group pledged its members would push “all parties to allow immediate and sustained humanitarian access to reach all people in need” and “take immediate steps to secure the full support of all parties to the conflict for a cessation of hostilities.” Those parties, however—the Syrian government and mainstream rebel groups—weren’t actually part of the negotiations. Thursday’s agreement merely sets the terms for how a cessation of hostilities would look, leaving the United States, Russia, Iran, and others to convince their allies on the ground to abide by the pact.

How exactly they’ll convince the regime and the opposition to play along hasn’t yet been decided; the declaration gives the ISSG a week to figure out the details of the agreement and implement them. “We will only be able to see whether this was a breakthrough in a few days,” admitted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during the announcement, which took place at a security conference in Munich. Secretary of State John Kerry also tempered expectations for the cessation agreement. “The real test is clearly whether or not all the parties honor those commitments and implement them in reality,” he said. “What I’ve said again and again is we cannot guarantee success in the outcome.”

The fact that the opposition’s High Negotiations Council, a body made up of dissident Syrian politicians and rebel leaders, is not taking part in the discussions in Munich means the agreement may not get crucial buy-in from armed groups on the battlefield. Such support is critical for political negotiations or agreements to hold.

The Washington Post reported that while rebels may accept the “ceasefire”—the United States and Russia are divided on whether to use the term—out of exhaustion and lack of options, they are still highly skeptical. “We no longer trust words. There have been too many recently, matched with opposite action on the ground from the Russians,” Issam Rayess, a spokesman for the rebels’ Southern Front coalition that fights near Damascus, told the Post‘s Liz Sly. “Within a week everything will have been destroyed,” one civilian told her. And no matter what the rebels decide, the agreement will also have no effect on jihadi groups like ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s homegrown affiliate of Al Qaeda.

The High Negotiations Council has adopted a wait-and-see approach. When the Geneva talks stopped earlier this month, the HNC said it would not return to the table until Russian airstrikes ended and humanitarian aid began flowing to starving and decimated areas of Syria. The United Nation’s Syria envoy hopes to restart the talks by February 25, and HNC spokesman Salim al-Muslat says the cessation of hostilities must actually take effect before the opposition returns to talks. “If we see action and implementation, we will see you very soon in Geneva,” he told reporters on Thursday.

But even if the fighting does stop for any significant length of time, the two sides are still no closer to agreeing on the most basic issue of the war: what to do with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The opposition and its backers will not accept any political solution that allows Assad to stay in office. But on the same day the cessation was announced, Assad told the French wire service AFP that he has no plans to give up any territory or power, instead reconfirming his intent to regain control of the entire country. “This is a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “It makes no sense for us to say that we will give up any part of Syria.” As Middle East analyst Brooklyn Middleton noted on Twitter, Assad’s statement means the cessation of hostilities will mostly be an illusion of progress rather than an actual achievement.

From – 

There’s Finally an Agreement to Stop the Fighting in Syria—and It’s Probably Doomed

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s Finally an Agreement to Stop the Fighting in Syria—and It’s Probably Doomed