Groan! I use WebCT

Just when I think that I am out of it, they pull me back in.

Silvio's imitation of Al Pacino's anguish in The Godfather II that causes Tony Soprano and his pals to break up in laughter.

I use WebCT extensively with my U. S. history classes. I assumed that I was doing the right things by dragging my students into 21st-century-behavior. After reading this report, I dunno.

[x CHE]
From the issue dated July 4, 2003

Study of Wisconsin Professors Finds Drawbacks to Course-Management Systems
By DAN CARNEVALE

As course-management systems become staples of college instruction, some students and professors say the software is harder to learn to use than they expected, a survey in the University of Wisconsin System has found.

Professors at many universities say that course-management software helps them organize their courses better and brings new levels of interaction both among students and between students and professors. The Wisconsin study sought to test that hypothesis by asking what professors really think about the software.

According to the study, faculty members find course-management systems time-consuming and inflexible, and students find them difficult to use. Some faculty members in the Wisconsin system reported that their students actively discourage the use of course-management systems.

A report on the study, "Faculty Use of Course Management Systems," confirms that the software is becoming ubiquitous as a classroom tool -- not just in online learning, but also in otherwise-traditional face-to-face courses. In fact, 80 percent of the faculty members in the survey who use the software apply it primarily to traditional courses.

Technophobic Students

The study is based on a survey of 730 faculty and staff members in the University of Wisconsin System who use course-management systems, and on interviews with 140 of them. The survey participants make up about 11 percent of the system's faculty members and about half of those who use course-management software.

Most faculty members who took part in the survey use Blackboard software, although some use WebCT. A handful of professors use other systems, including LearningSpace and Prometheus.

Glenda Morgan, the university system's learning-technology analyst, wrote the report. The study was financed by the Center for Applied Research of Educause, the education-technology consortium. Although the study covers professors in the Wisconsin system only, Ms. Morgan says she would expect to see similar results at most major institutions in the United States.

The study concludes that professors at Wisconsin generally find course-management systems to be good organizational tools for teaching, research, and administration.

But some technical difficulties limit the software's full benefits. Despite the popular notion that students are technologically savvy and converse mainly through instant messaging and e-mail, the study found that many students are not proficient with technology.

Ms. Morgan says the faculty members are reluctant to use some of the bells and whistles of the software because they see some students as a little technophobic. "Apparently lots of students are having problems using the technology," she says.

She suggests that institutions spend more time training their faculty members on how to use the technology in their courses.

Drivers and Inhibitors

James L. Morrison, a professor emeritus of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that because the survey was not based on responses from a random sample of faculty members, the results do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the system's entire faculty. Even so, he says, the findings are of value because the survey attracted many responses.

Mr. Morrison, who is also editor of an online journal called The Technology Source, says he is not surprised that some students have trouble with technology. The stereotype, he says, is of 18- or 19-year-old Web surfers, while the reality is that many students are as old as 40 and 50.

Richard Katz, vice president of Educause, says the study dispels a myth that all students are on top of the latest gadgetry and are demanding it in the classroom.

"You simultaneously have students who are drivers of faculty behavior and also are inhibitors of using technology," Mr. Katz says. "It's a bit of a twist of the problem of the digital divide."

He says that Educause will finance another study asking students what they think of course-management systems and how they use them.

Matthew Pittinsky, chairman of Blackboard Inc., says he is surprised at the finding that students were slow to feel comfortable with the software. He says he has found that students are the ones demanding that their professors use more technology in the classroom.

Sometimes, he says, students are not so much confused by the technology as they are frustrated by constantly having to check online for further course discussions and additional reading assignments. "Ease of use is the most important aspect of the technology," Mr. Pittinsky says.

Ms. Morgan says one benefit of the software is that it prompts faculty members to rethink their approach to teaching. For example, many professors use electronic bulletin boards to supplement discussions they have in the classroom.

"They have this electronic discussion running at the same time," Ms. Morgan says. "They're not thinking about student pedagogy as they go into it, but that seems to be the outcome."

Text of the Study

Copyright, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2003

Ben Sargent on Tom DeLay, 6/29/03

Ben Sargent strikes again. Tom DeLay (R-TX) is an editorial cartoonist's dream. As William (Boss) Tweed said of the Thomas Nast editorial cartoons that savaged him in the New York Time in the early 1870s: I don't care what they write about me, it's them damn pitchers!

Ben Sargent, 6/29/03

Take This, W!

Erik V. Williams is that rarest of creatures in the Texas Panhandle: a LIB-ER-AL! The members of the GOP (God's Own Party) have been proclaiming that the naysayers are not worthy to kiss W's feet." This is one of the best responses to the GOP to date.

[x Amarillo Fishwrap]
Web posted Sunday, June 29, 2003
4:55 a.m. CT

Guest Column: No need to pucker up for W's feet


By Erik V. Williams

We all are familiar with the images of Saddam Hussein and his fawning sycophants stepping forward, bowing and kissing their great leader's shirt collar, his shoulders, his sleeves and hands in dutiful obeisance.

No sooner had Saddam been blasted from the earth, we were offered our own version of the above, with a local letter-writer demanding that liberal "whine-bags should get down on their knees and kiss (the president's) feet."

That the right should suddenly wax sentimental about Saddam is a trifle late, but is adopting the style of Eastern potentates in a republic really the best way to pay homage to their former ally?

The West has a long tradition of emulating and importing much that it has found in the Middle East. Ever since Alexander the Great conquered Persia and assumed the silk robes and jeweled slippers of Darius III in Babylon more than two millennia ago, god-kings, divine right and absolute monarchy have had an inordinate appeal to the ruling classes of the West.

Such customs have been a little out of fashion lately, but conservatives always have had a strong respect for tradition. Entering Babylon again has apparently excited ancient memories, older even than the late Strom Thurmond. Alexander's followers were required to prostrate themselves in his divine presence.

Was this writer onto something?

Does George Bush sit at his computer late at night like Bruce Nolan, watching the prayers to the Almighty stream in, beseeching him for solace and mercy?

"Please, please don't let me be indicted!" come the pleas.

"OK, Kenny Boy," George responds, punching the "Yes" key. "Sorry, Martha," hitting the "NO!" button.

"I pray the weapons of mass destruction will be found and the credibility of the United States is restored."

"OK, Laura, looks like I'll have to put them out myself!" says George.

Republicans may have their fantasies, but George Bush is not God. If he were, things would be quite different. The United States would act as if it alone ruled the world. Conservatives would think they owned the country and its affairs were nobody else's business. Republicans would control all branches of government and . . . uh, well. Ahem.

OK, things would be a lot different, but that has not kept right-wingers from believing Bush is the next best thing to God: divinely appointed. Democrats have always thought the 2000 election was a little queer and suspected the will of the people was thwarted. They were right. It was divine intervention, according to many conservatives. Who better to rig the voting without leaving any fingerprints?

Though members of the National Rifle Association said Bush owed his presidency to them, the fact he owes it to God has been obvious to the specialists who really know how to interpret events. Bush is on a mission from God.

How else is one to explain his swift ascent from such humble origins to the height of power unless he was marked out by the Almighty? Has he not been anointed with oil, lots of it? Was not his divine status foretold by the appearance of the burning shrub upon Mount Sinai as witnessed by Moses, played by none other than Charlton Heston, president of the NRA? Did Bush have not just three but nine supremely wise men and women recognize and usher him unto us?

In the fullness of time, we have witnessed the transfiguration of a C student into a towering leader with the "wisdom of Solomon," and a Methodist (considered apostates by fundamentalists) - into a "super Christian." With God's Own Party, he has cast the evil Demoncrats out of power and will reign a thousand years. Well, five more anyway.

Now, in these last days, with his terrible swift sword he did smite the harlot of Babylon to smithereens. He has unleashed a crusade upon the earth against evildoers to bring peace to the world. Oh, how the mighty tremble in anticipation of tax-free dividends, and the poor rejoice, freed from the bondage of employment.

Such a demigod deserves reverence and awe. Little wonder, then, that one peep about being "ashamed" can elicit so much outrage. Such blasphemies must be punished by those who demand respect be paid the president, just as they were so scrupulous in showing the utmost respect to the previous one.

Despite the fevered imaginations of some, it is not a sin to run or vote against Bush in the next election - yet. As for puckering up to Bush's 10 little piggies, real Americans bow to no man, especially their public servants. We're not about to have our president imitate divine beings and foreign dictators by kissing people on the head and strutting around in a military uniform and - oh, shoot.

Well, liberals, being un-American, had better pray Bush changes his socks and doesn't have smelly feet.

Erik V. Williams of Amarillo is a frequent contributor to the Other Opinion page.

Lighten Up, Nino Baby

[x NYTimes]
June 29, 2003
Nino's Opéra Bouffe
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — Antonin Scalia fancies himself the intellectual of the Supreme Court, an aesthete who likes opera and wines, a bon vivant who loves poker and plays songs like "It's a Grand Old Flag" on the piano; a real man who hunts and reads Ducks Unlimited magazine; a Catholic father of nine who once told a prayer breakfast: "We are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for the courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world."

Like other conservatives, he enjoys acting besieged while belittling the other side. "Alas," he drily told the journalist Hanna Rosin, "being tough and traditional is a heavy cross to bear. Duresse oblige."

He's so Old School, he's Old Testament, misty over the era when military institutes did not have to accept women, when elite schools did not have to make special efforts with blacks, when a gay couple in their own bedroom could be clapped in irons, when women were packed off to Our Lady of Perpetual Abstinence Home for Unwed Mothers.

He relishes eternal principles, like helping a son of the establishment dispense with the messiness of a presidential vote count. (His wife met him at the door after Bush v. Gore with a chilled martini.)

He's an American archetype, or Archie type. Full of blustery rants against modernity and nostalgia for "the way Glenn Miller played, songs that made the hit parade . . . girls were girls and men were men." Antonin Scalia is Archie Bunker in a high-backed chair. Like Archie, Nino is the last one to realize that his intolerance is risibly out-of-date.

The court issued a bracing 6-to-3 decision declaring it illegitimate to punish people for who they are, and Justice Scalia fulminated in a last gasp of the old Pat Buchanan/Bill Bennett homophobic conservatism.

In his dissent to the decision striking down a Texas sodomy law and declaring that gays are "entitled to respect for their private lives," Justice Scalia raved that the court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and predicted a "massive disruption of the current social order." (Has this man never seen a Rupert Everett movie?)

State laws could tumble, he huffed, barring masturbation. Next, Sister Scalia will tell us it makes you go blind. He also tut-tutted that laws against bestiality might fall away. (Maybe he should be warning fellow dissenter Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill told Congress he had been beastly to her by describing an X-rated film about bestiality.)

The stegosaurus Scalia roared that the court had "taken sides in the culture war." Conservatives shrieked the door was open to everything from lap dancing to gay marriage. (Note to the panicked right: Newsweek just reported married heterosexuals were strangers to sex. So, if you want gay couples to stop having sex, let them get married.)

Mr. Scalia has frothed about "Kulturkampf" since 1996, when he did an Archie screed on gays having "high disposable income" and "disproportionate political power." Sounds just like people at Bush fund-raisers. (One here Friday was headlined by the First Nephew, George P. Bush, to buck-rake for a group promoting conservative court nominees.)

Most Americans, even Republicans, have a more tolerant and happy vision of the country than Mr. Scalia and other nattering nabobs of negativism. Their jeremiads yearn for an airbrushed 50's America that never really existed. (The pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church, which condemns homosexuality, proves that.) And the America they feared — everyone having orgies, getting stoned and burning the flag — never came to pass.

Nino is too blinded by his own bloviation to notice that Americans are not as censorious as he is. They like the complicated national mosaic — that Dick Cheney has a gay daughter, that Jeb Bush has a Latina wife, that Clarence Thomas has a white wife. Newt Gingrich can leave two wives for younger women and Bill (Virtues) Bennett can blow $8 million on slot machines. Even those who did not like Bill Clinton cringed at Ken Starr's giddy voyeurism.

Justice Scalia may play patriotic songs on the piano, but Justice Anthony Kennedy gave patriotism true meaning in time for the Fourth of July. His ruling eloquently reminded the country, "Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct."

In the immortal words of John Riggins, loosen up, Nino, baby.

Lighten Up, Sandy Baby

John Riggins, bullish (and oafish) running back for the Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins, was seated at the same table with newly appointed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He attempted make small talk and Justice O'Connor evidently was not charmed. Riggins said - dismissively - Lighten up, Sandy Baby. Later, Riggins got out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor of the banquet room. I wonder how Riggins stacks up with Justice Clarence Thomas in Justice O'Connor's list of clowns?

[x NYTimes]
June 29, 2003
'The Majesty of the Law': Bench Press
By DENNIS J. HUTCHINSON


THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW
Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice.
By Sandra Day O'Connor.
Edited by Craig Joyce.
Illustrated. 330 pp. New York: Random House. $25.95.


Like the taciturn cowboys she recalled so affectionately in her memoir a year ago, ''The Lazy B,'' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor believes that actions speak better than words and that beliefs require little reflection or explanation. What may be admirable qualities of discretion in an age of self-revelation pose a problem for public figures like O'Connor, who are annually invited to speak before countless civic groups, law schools and bar associations. For O'Connor, who clearly relishes the invitations, the problem is compounded by the traditional ethic of judges against discussing the contested issues that come before their courts, topics that prompt the greatest interest in hearing the speaker in the first place. As she explains in ''The Majesty of the Law'': ''Most audiences would be delighted to hear details of how the court reached a consensus on some hot-button issue, or gossip about the court or its members. But those topics are, of course, off limits.''

Debarred from speaking candidly, O'Connor has elected to explore the histories ''of the Constitution, of the court and of some former members of the court, of the expansion of roles for women, and of the Rule of Law worldwide.'' Still, interspersed among the potted histories of the court and the dutiful memorials to former colleagues are chapters providing an occasional glimpse into the steely judge behind the muted prose.

Not surprisingly, O'Connor is at her most frank and most interesting when she addresses her status as the first woman to serve on the court. What difference has it made to the institution? Her answer is somewhat equivocal. ''My intuition and my experience persuade me that having women on the bench, and in other positions of prominence, is extremely important.'' She adds that until the percentage of women in important office, including the court, comes ''closer to 50 percent, we cannot say we have succeeded'': success would matter not because women bring a different view to judging, or legislating (she served in the Arizona legislature before becoming a state court judge). Only stereotypes, she argues, prevent women from achieving parity, a view borne of her own experience 50 years ago, when the only job a law firm offered her, after she made a distinguished record at Stanford Law School, was as a legal secretary.

O'Connor rejects a study that said her ''opinions differ in a particularly feminine way from those of my colleagues,'' especially in that they ''employ a contextual approach and tend to reject so-called bright-line rules. I would guess that my colleagues on the court would be as surprised as I am by these conclusions.'' The surprise would only be in the label feminine: O'Connor is famous for rather fact-specific and murky tests of constitutionality in extremely important and controversial areas, like abortion and affirmative action.

Yet O'Connor also thinks -- a few pages later -- that women in fact judge differently in some circumstances, even if that should not be a principal reason for appointing them. She points to a study showing that female judges were no more likely to convict female defendants than were male judges, but they were much more likely to send female convicts to jail. ''I believe this was true when I was a trial judge, and I think I know why. Male judges are more likely to believe a sob story from a female defendant. Female judges know better.''

Grounding her view of women in public life is her admiration for two pioneers, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both feminists committed to equal rights and not to special privileges because of their sex. ''It is unsettling at times,'' O'Connor says, underscoring the point, ''to hear some modern feminists couch their reform agenda in terms of protection and recognition of their uniquely female perspectives. When gender distinctiveness becomes a mantra, I worry that, in our voyage from the 18th century to the present, we have not really traveled very far at all.''

O'Connor notes that among the 19th-century leaders in that voyage were ''relatively enlightened'' Western states that extended the franchise to women long before their Eastern counterparts. The role of the states looms large in her history of constitutional and feminist development, and dovetails with unflinching commitment to federalism and the prerogatives of the states. In fact, she declares that federalism is a constitutional principle ''nearly as dear to the American people'' as the Bill of Rights and the protection of individual liberties -- a startling claim that may reflect more her Western roots and experience in state government than a measured reading of the evidence.

True to her promise, Justice O'Connor refrains from close discussion of ''hot-button issues.'' Bush v. Gore, which ''determined the outcome of the election,'' barely gets a mention, and the 1973 abortion decision earns a backhanded nod: ''No one, it seems, considers the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade to have settled the issue for all time. Such intense debate by citizens is as it should be. A nation that docilely and unthinkingly approved every Supreme Court decision as infallible and immutable would, I believe, have severely disappointed the founders.''

The founders of the Constitution are vivid players in Justice O'Connor's occasional speeches. Her sympathies seem to lie, at least to some extent, with the Antifederalists -- those who opposed the Constitution, feared strong central government and were committed to preserving maximum sovereignty for the states. The ''Federalists and Antifederalists are in a sense still competing for control of the American political culture,'' she writes. If so, the primary forum for the debate is the Supreme Court, and O'Connor sits -- comfortably, it seems -- at the epicenter. She has been the court's balance wheel for a decade, urging caution when her colleagues at both extremes have sought absolutes. Her adroit negotiation of the issues will be remembered long after her off-the-bench writings are politely forgotten.

Time was when Supreme Court justices spoke only through their opinions and confined their rare extrajudicial publications to professional journals. The Rehnquist court has broken the mold. In addition to O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist have published books recently, and Clarence Thomas has received attention, and some criticism, for a reported $1.5 million advance on his memoirs. To those who think judges should not profit from their office, it should be noted that the proceeds from Justice O'Connor's book are to be donated to the Arizona Community Foundation.

Dennis J. Hutchinson teaches constitutional law and legal history at the University of Chicago, where he also edits The Supreme Court Review.

Welcome, Mark Hanna!

Mark Hanna, Associate Librarian of the King Library at Amarillo College, just joined the ranks of members of this Web log (Blog). I think that enables Mark to post his own rants and raves to the Blog. So far, I have not had any luck installing the 3rd-party software to the Blog template that would enable any visitor to comment on the Blog contents. I don't know if just anyone ought to have that right. By stepping up and joining this little club, Mark has earned the right to have a take (as they say on jock radio).

I'm the Son of a Cab Drivin' Man

My father - Robert (Bobby to his friends) M. Sapper - drove a taxi cab in Denver, CO for 30+ years. He worked the night shift (8:00pm - 4:00am) most of those years. He drove for Publix Cabs until that local firm was bought out by Yellow Cab. He survived belligerent drunks, armed robbers, and a massive heart attack at age 45 late one afternoon in December 1960. He never charged a minister, priest, or nun (He called them Sky Pilots.) for the trip in his cab. He never passed a beggar or bell ringer without putting a buck (as he put it) in the hat, box, or kettle.

[x Weekly Standard
Taxicab Confessions: Why an economic study of cab drivers and incentive structures suggests that economists may be obsolete.

by David Brooks

06/27/2003 12:00:00 AM


David Brooks, senior editor

TWO VERY INTERESTING economics pieces (yes, it is possible) in the New York Times yesterday. The first is a front page piece headlined Very Richest's Share of Income Grew Even Bigger, Data Show. The average income of the 400 richest taxpayers in the U.S. grew to $174 million, up from an annual $46 million in 1992. Meanwhile, in part because of cuts in the capital gain tax rate, the percentage of the income their paid in taxes declined, to about 22 percent from over 26 percent.

I can hear liberal tongues clucking. The rich are getting richer and they are bearing less and less of the burden.

I guess I'd ask them to consider another way of looking at the situation: This story could equally be read as a tremendous vindication of Republican policies. The cut in the capital gains rate encouraged some extremely rich people to more aggressively invest in new companies and ideas. Those investments paid off. New companies were founded, new jobs were created, new products went on the market and new needs were filled. Meanwhile these investors reaped much larger profits than they would have otherwise. Their incomes skyrocketed and as a result they paid much more into the federal treasury. Twenty-two percent of $174 million is a lot more than 26 percent of $46 million. So the least fortunate, who are sometimes the beneficiaries of government programs, benefit too.

This story is phenomenally good news! Maybe the message should be "Rich Pay Much More In Taxes, Provide Many More Social Goods."

Not being an economist I can't really say which slant is more valid. I only want to remind people that two radically different narratives can emerge from the same data. That's why we all have to question our assumptions from time to time.

NOT BEING AN ECONOMIST I often enjoy the Economic Scene columns in the business section. They often summarize huge amounts of economic research from journals the rest of us couldn't possibly fathom. Today, Alan Krueger summarizes the data on whether people really respond to opportunities to get rich. "Work hours are only weakly associated with pay," Krueger reports. One study found that on busy convention days, many cab drivers in New York actually worked fewer hours. They hit their target income and then they went home to enjoy it. But other, more experienced, drivers tended to work longer on good days, learning its best to make hay while the sun shines. Yet another study found that drivers work as long as they can until they get tired, regardless of income or the opportunities of the day.

Today's column left me feeling glad that I'm not an economist. Obviously people respond to incentives, but economists have feeble tools to explain human behavior. Think about when you find yourself working hard. Maybe you work hard because it is in your nature to do so, or maybe you are congenitally lazy. Sometimes you work it because there is money to be made. But more often you labor because you are engaged by your work, or you feel good at it, or you want to earn the respect of your co-workers, or you like to think of yourself as a hard worker. I suspect the work patterns for most of us in the information age are ridiculously disassociated with short term income and are much more likely to be associated with issues of character, spiritual goals, and native interests.

Moreover, why are economists studying cab drivers, whose jobs are hardly typical? They do not work with peers and thus do not confront peer pressures the way most other workers do. There are not huge fluctuations in tasks and challenges in a driver's life, the way there are in most lives. Cab drivers probably derive less innate spiritual satisfaction from their job than most people in the information age. Why don't economists study teachers or meeting planners or economics professors? Then they would find their tools explained very little.

Is it possible the information economy is making economists obsolete?

David Brooks is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.

Ben Sargent's Latest

Ben Sargent, 6/26/03

Lying works in Tulia, TX just was well as it works in Washington, DC.

Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas dissented in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). W wants more Justices like them. Lord help us.

[x NYTimes]

June 26, 2003
Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Law Banning Sodomy
By JOEL BRINKLEY



WASHINGTON, June 26 — The Supreme Court struck down a Texas law today that forbids homosexual sex, and reversed its own ruling in a similar Georgia case 17 years ago, thus invalidating antisodomy laws in the states that still have them.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 Texas decision, said that gay people "are entitled to respect for their private lives," adding that "the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer agreed with Justice Kennedy. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor sided with the majority in its decision, but in a separate opinion disagreed with some of Justice Kennedy's reasoning.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent and took the unusual step of reading it aloud from the bench this morning, saying "the court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," while adding that he personally has "nothing against homosexuals." Joining Justice Scalia's dissent were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Scalia said he believed the ruling paved the way for homosexual marriages. "This reasoning leaves on shaky, pretty shaky, grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples," he wrote.

The court's actions today would also seem to overturn any law forbidding sodomy, no matter whether it deals with homosexual or heterosexual activity.

The case, Lawrence v. Texas, No. 02-102, was an appeal of a ruling by the Texas Court of Appeals, which had upheld the law barring "deviate sexual intercourse." The plaintiffs, John G. Lawrence and Tyron Garner of Houston, were arrested in 1998 after police officers, responding to a false report of a disturbance, discovered them having sex in Mr. Lawrence's apartment. Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Garner were jailed overnight and fined $200 each after pleading no contest to sodomy charges.

In its ruling today in the Texas case and its revisiting of the 1986 Georgia case, the Supreme Court made a sharp turn.

In 1986, the justices upheld an antisodomy law in Georgia, prompting protests from gay rights advocates and civil liberties groups. But in the 17 years since, the social climate in the United States has changed, broadening public perceptions of gays and softening the legal and social sanctions that once confronted gay people. Until 1961, all 50 states banned sodomy. By 1968, that number had dwindled to 24 states, and by today's ruling, it stood at 13.

Even though the court upheld the Georgia antisodomy statute — which had applied to heterosexual as well as homosexual conduct — a Georgia court later voided it. But the justices' ruling on the legal principle behind the Georgia statute continued to stand, so today the court, voting 5 to 4, issued a new ruling overturning its 1986 decision in the Georgia case.

Of the three current justices who were on the court when it initially ruled in the Georgia case, in 1986, Justices Rehnquist and O'Connor voted to uphold the Georgia law in 1986 and Justice Stevens voted to strike it down.

The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which works on behalf of gay rights advocates and related groups, brought the appeal of the Texas ruling to the court, arguing that it violated equal protection and due process laws. It described sexual intimacy in the home as an aspect of the "liberty" protected by the Constitutional guarantee of due process.

Today's ruling "will be a powerful tool for gay people in all 50 states where we continue fighting to be treated equally," the Lambda fund's legal director, Ruth Harlow, said. "For decades, these laws have been a major roadblock to equality. They've labeled the entire gay community as criminals and second-class citizens. Today, the Supreme Court ended that once and for all."

Some lawyers for the plaintiffs wept in the courtroom as the court made public its decision today. Several legal and medical groups had joined gay rights and human rights groups in their challenge to the Texas law.

But traditional-values conservatives reacted angrily to the court's actions, particularly regarding the prospect that they could open the legal door to gay marriages.

"If there's no rational basis for prohibiting same-sex sodomy by consenting adults, then state laws prohibiting prostitution, adultery, bigamy, and incest are at risk," Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America, a conservative group, said. "No doubt, homosexual activists will try to bootstrap this decision into a mandate for same-sex marriage. Any attempt to equate sexual perversion with the institution that is the very foundation of society is as baseless as this ruling."

Nonetheless, today's ruling was not surprising, given the tone of the justices' questions during oral arguments before the court on March 26, when it appeared that a majority of the court was even then ready to overturn the Texas law.

Most of the remaining states with antisodomy laws forbid anal or oral sex among consenting adults no matter their sex or relationship. Texas is one of only four states whose law distinguished between heterosexual and homosexual consensual sex.

In the March arguments, the plaintiffs' lawyer, Paul M. Smith, chose to argue that while the concept of gay rights as such did not have deep historical roots, a libertarian spirit of personal privacy did reach back to the country's beginnings.

"So you really have a tradition of respect for the privacy of couples in their home, going back to the founding," Mr. Smith said. He noted that three-quarters of the states had repealed their criminal sodomy laws for everyone, "based on a recognition that it's not consistent with our basic American values about the relationship between the individual and the state."

Justice Scalia retorted, "Suppose that all the states had laws against flagpole sitting at one time" and subsequently repealed them. "Does that make flagpole sitting a fundamental right?"

The district attorney for Harris County, Tex., Charles A. Rosenthal Jr., argued that "Texas has the right to set moral standards and can set bright-line moral standards for its people." He asked the court "not to disenfranchise 23 million Texans who ought to have the right to participate in questions having to do with moral issues."

But in the ruling today, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "A law branding one class of persons as criminal solely based on the state's moral disapproval of that class and the conduct associated with that class runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause, under any standard of review."

Bob Dole asked in 1996, Where's the outrage? Youneverknow. $19 has the Republicans bitching because those poor bastards receiving the $19-refund didn't pay any income tax and therefore, deserved nothing. And State Representative (ahem, U.S. Representative) Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land) is going to seek redistricting in Texas after every election. Why wait until the next Census? And we can't find the WMD! Where's the outrage? I hope the Democrats in the Legislature walk and keep DeLay and Governor Good Hair and Speaker Crackpot fuming for the entire 30-day Special Session! Walk, boys (and girls)!

[x NYTimes]
June 26, 2003
Very Richest's Share of Income Grew Even Bigger, Data Show
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON


he 400 wealthiest taxpayers accounted for more than 1 percent of all the income in the United States in the year 2000, more than double their share just eight years earlier, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. But their tax burden plummeted over the period.

The data, in a report that the I.R.S. released last night, shows that the average income of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers was almost $174 million in 2000. That was nearly quadruple the $46.8 million average in 1992. The minimum income to qualify for the list was $86.8 million in 2000, more than triple the minimum income of $24.4 million of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers in 1992.

While the sharp growth in incomes over that period coincided with the stock market bubble, other factors appear to account for much of the increase. A cut in capital gains tax rates in 1997 to 20 percent from 28 percent encouraged long-term holders of assets, like privately owned businesses, to sell them, and big increases in executive compensation thrust corporate chiefs into the ranks of the nation's aristocracy.

This year's tax cut reduced the capital gains rate further, to 15 percent.

The data from 2000 is the latest available from the I.R.S., but various government reports indicate that salaries, dividends and other forms of income have continued to rise since then, even as the stock market has fallen.

The top 400 reported 1.1 percent of all income earned in 2000, up from 0.5 percent in 1992. Their taxes grew at a much slower rate, from 1 percent of all taxes in 1992 to 1.6 percent in 2000, when their tax bills averaged $38.6 million each.

Those numbers can be read to show that the wealthiest, as a group, carried a disproportionate share of the overall tax burden — 1.6 percent of all taxes, versus just 1.1 percent of all income — evidence that all sides in the tax debate will be able to find ammunition in the data.

In 2000, the top 400 on average paid 22.3 percent of their income in federal income tax, down from 26.4 percent in 1992 and a peak of 29.9 percent in 1995. Two factors explain most of this decline, according to the I.R.S.: reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and bigger gifts to charity.

Had President Bush's latest tax cuts been in effect in 2000, the average tax bill for the top 400 would have been about $30.4 million — a savings of $8.3 million, or more than a fifth, according to an analysis of the I.R.S. data by The New York Times. That would have resulted in an average tax rate of 17.5 percent.

The rate actually paid by the top 400 in 2000 was about the same as that paid by a single person making $123,000 or a married couple with two children earning $226,000, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor-backed group whose calculations are respected by a broad spectrum of tax experts.

The group favors higher taxes on the wealthy, and its director, Robert S. McIntyre, said yesterday that the I.R.S. data bolsters that viewpoint. "Regardless of which party these 400 are in, these are the guys Bush wants to help, even though they have so much money they don't know what to do with it," he said. "How Bush feels about the half of the population that doesn't have much money is he got them a tax cut worth an average of $19 each."

William W. Beach, a tax expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization that favors lowering taxes for all Americans, said that the top 400 taxpayers made "the significant contribution" to government revenue — about one in every $64 of individual income tax paid. Cutting taxes, he said, will prompt the wealthy to invest more in the economy's growth.

Detailed information about high-income Americans has become increasingly important in setting tax policy, because the government relies on the top 1.3 million households for 37.4 percent of individual federal income tax revenue. The half of Americans who earned less than $27,682 in 2000, paid less than 4 percent of income taxes.

All of the I.R.S. data is based on adjusted gross income, the figure reported on the last line on the front page of individual income tax returns. Interest earned on municipal bonds, which are exempt from tax, is not included.

Over the nine years of tax returns that were examined for the new report, only a handful of taxpayers showed up in the top 400 every year, according to I.R.S. officials. In all, about 2,200 taxpayers made the cut even once. There were a few incomes of more than $1 billion a year in the group, but none as high as $10 billion.

The names of the wealthiest taxpayers are not disclosed in the report, which was prepared at the urging of Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan business school professor who serves on an I.R.S. advisory panel and is a leading authority on taxation of high-income Americans.

The figures do not include the incomes of the many wealthy Americans who use shelters to reduce their reported incomes below the level of the top 400.

In 1999 and 2000, for example, William T. Esrey — then the chief executive of Sprint, the telecommunications company — earned more than $150 million in stock option profits, lofting him onto many lists of the best-paid corporate managers.

That income might have put Mr. Esrey in the I.R.S.'s top 400 taxpayers. But, as later came to light, Mr. Esrey bought a tax shelter from Ernst & Young, the accounting firm, designed to let him delay reporting the profits for tax purposes until the year 2030. Sprint's board forced Mr. Esrey to resign in March after he acknowledged that the shelter was the subject of an I.R.S. audit.

Over the nine years reviewed in the new report, the incomes of the top 400 taxpayers increased at 15 times the rate of the bottom 90 percent of Americans; their average income rose 17 percent, to $27,000, from 1992 to 2000.

Long-term capital gains accounted for 64 percent of the income of the top 400 in 2000, nearly double the level in 1992. Wages contributed 16.7 percent to the incomes of the top 400 in 2000, down from 26.2 percent in 1992, and dividends made up 2.8 percent.

A second report that the I.R.S. will make public today shows that the number of Americans with high incomes who pay no taxes anywhere in the world has reached a record. In 2000, there were 2,022 Americans with incomes of more than $200,000 who paid no income tax anywhere in the world, up from just 37 in 1977, when the report was first issued.

Last week the American Association of University Professors announced the removal of censure from four institutions and did not place a single institution on censure at its 2003 annual meeting; it was the first time that no censure had been invoked in 37 years. That got me thinking (?). I teach at a public 2-year-college that has been on the AAUP Censure List for 35 years.

[x AAUP]
Censured Administrations
1930-2002

The following record is a companion piece to the feature article "The AAUP's Censure List" about the history of the AAUP's censure list. The citations below refer to the Association's journal. From its first appearance in 1915 until 1978, it was published under the title Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors. Since February 1979, it has been titled Academe: Bulletin of the AAUP. For the period 1930-81, the page numbers in the journal are consecutive from one issue to the next for each calendar year, and the citations therefore refer to a year, a volume number, and page numbers. Starting in 1982, the consecutive page numbers are limited to each issue of the journal, so the citations refer to a year, volume number, issue number, and page numbers.

Investigating Institution Committee Report Censure Imposed Censure Removed

[snip snip]
Amarillo College (TX) 1967, v.53, 292–302 1968, v.54, 172–73 BLANK
[snip snip]

You are known by the company you keep. Amarillo College is among some of the sleaziest outfits in educationdom, or, academia as my educationist colleagues are wont to say. We are on probation because the prexy in the 1960s was a wacko akin to Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. He didn't roll ball bearings in his hand, they rolled in his head. He fired another wacko without due process and proceeded to stiff the AAUP investigating committee. The committee had no choice.

Find all of the stuff at Academic Freedom and Tenure.

[x BBC] Thursday, 19 October, 2000
Who are Hamas?

Hamas was born during the last intifada

By BBC News Online's Kathryn Westcott

Hamas, the main Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories, was born soon after the previous intifada erupted in 1987.

The organisation opposes the Oslo peace process and its short-term aim is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories.

Hamas does not recognise the right of Israel to exist. Its long-term aim is to establish an Islamic state on land originally mandated as Palestine - most of which has been contained within Israel's borders since its creation in 1948.

The organisation has strong support in Gaza

The grass-roots organisation - with a political and a military wing - has an unknown number of hard-core members but tens of thousands of supporters and sympathisers.

It has two main functions:

*It is involved in building schools and hospitals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and in helping the community in social and religious ways.

*The military wing of Hamas - known as the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - has carried out a series of bloody attacks against Israeli targets.

In February and March 1996, Hamas carried out several bus bombings, killing nearly 60 Israelis. It was also blamed for attacks in 1997 in Jerusalem which killed 15 people, and brought the peace process grinding to a halt.

Yasser Arafat's Palestinain Authority (PA) - the government-in-waiting if a Palestinian state is established - views Hamas as a serious rival, yet the Palestinian leader has tried to co-opt the movement into mainstream politics.

But his insistence that Hamas recognise the PA as the only national authority in the Palestinian territories and cease military operations against Israel has been resisted.

Hamas argues that to accept the PA would be to recognise the Oslo accords - which Islamist groups saw as nothing more than a security deal between the PA, Israel and the US, with the ultimate aim of wiping them out.

Despite a fierce offensive against the group in 1996, when the PA arrested some 1,000 Palestinians and took over mosques in Gaza, the PA has been careful not to drive Hamas underground.

'No civil war'

There were concerns this could breed violence that could provoke a collective repression against the Palestinians, which has been inflicted by Israel in the past.

Also, Mr Arafat would not want to be seen to be doing Israel's bidding by trying to destroy Hamas.

The leadership of the organisation has long been divided, with some emphasising Hamas' eventual absorption into the political scene as a legitimate opposition party.

After the 1996 clampdown, more moderate Hamas policymakers questioned whether the suicide attacks were worth the cost of repression.


Hamas has carried out suicide attacks in Israel

But others argued the military wing was necessary to protect the organisation against such repression.

As a result, the movement's leaders have tried, with little success, to get their followers to agree on a policy calling for military reprisals to what they would perceive as Israeli aggression but accepting coexistence with the PA.

The movement has long maintained that in the interests of Palestinian unity, it would not be drawn into a civil war with the PA.

Popular support

Hamas is particularly strong in Gaza, where the economic conditions are worse than the West Bank.

The spiritual head of the group is Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who despite his often fiery rhetoric is seen as the moderate face of the Palestinian Islamists.

The 64-year-old quadriplegic was released from prison in Israel in 1997, as King Hussein of Jordan's price for freeing Israeli Mossad agents after a bungled attempt to assassinate Hamas leader in Jordan, Khaled Meshal.

After his release, he devoted his energies to repairing damage to Hamas' educational and charitable institutions inflicted during the 1996 crackdown against the movement.

Although in theory based in the Palestinian territories, it was long viewed that the former Amman-based leaders were the real brains behind the movement's military arm.

They were allowed to operate in Jordan - where almost half the population is Palestinian - by the late King Hussein, because it gave him leverage over Mr Arafat.

But the group's headquarters was closed down by the king's successor, Abudullah, and senior figures expelled to Qatar.

6-23-03: Culture Watch

The Question Students Flunked

How well do students comprehend what they read? The answer provided by the federal government's latest test is not very reassuring. According to the National Asessment of Educational Progress, a substantial number of twelfth graders have trouble meeting basic reading proficiency standards. Translation: they can't read.

The National Report Card, as it's called, found that students are doing worse now than a decade ago. In 1992 one in five seniors flunked the test. In 2002 one in four flunked. (The survey found that students in the 4th and 8th grades did a little better than their counterparts in the 1990s.)

Sample Question: Students were asked to read the following passage from FCC chairman Newton Minow's famous address in 1961 denouncing television as a "vast wasteland." They were then asked to answer this question:

What was the main point of Mr. Minow's address?

The results? According to the chart provided by the NAEP:



2002 National Performance Results
Score
Percentage of Students
Evidence of full comprehension


47%
Evidence of partial or surface comprehension


38%
Evidence of little or no comprehension


12%
Omitted Item


2%
Off Task


2%


Note:
These results are for public and nonpublic school students.
Percentage may not add to 100 due to rounding.

The Passage

Newton Minow (1926– ) was appointed by President John Kennedy as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the agency responsible for regulating the use of the public airwaves. On May 9, 1961, he spoke to 2,000 members of the National Association of Broadcasters and told them that the daily fare on television was "a vast wasteland." Minow's indictment of commercial television launched a national debate about the quality of programming. After Minow's speech, the television critic for The New York Times wrote: "Tonight some broadcasters were trying to find dark explanations for Mr. Minow's attitude. In this matter the viewer possibly can be a little helpful; Mr. Minow has been watching television."

. . . Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.

Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them. . . .

Like everybody, I wear more than one hat. I am the chairman of the FCC. I am also a television viewer and the husband and father of other television viewers. I have seen a great many television programs that seemed to me eminently worthwhile, and I am not talking about the much-bemoaned good old days of "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One."

I am talking about this past season. Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as "The Fabulous Fifties," the "Fred Astaire Show" and the "Bing Crosby Special"; some were dramatic and moving, such as Conrad's "Victory" and "Twilight Zone"; some were marvelously informative, such as "The Nation's Future," "CBS Reports," and "The Valiant Years." I could list many more—programs that I am sure everyone here felt enriched his own life and that of his family. When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet, or rating book to distract you—and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And, most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.

Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can’t do better?. . .

Why is so much of television so bad? I have heard many answers: demands of your advertisers; competition for ever higher ratings; the need always to attract a mass audience; the high cost of television programs; the insatiable appetite for programming material—these are some of them. Unquestionably these are tough problems not susceptible to easy answers.

But I am not convinced that you have tried hard enough to solve them. I do not accept the idea that the present overall programming is aimed accurately at the public taste. The ratings tell us only that some people have their television sets turned on, and, of that number, so many are tuned to one channel and so many to another. They don't tell us what the public might watch if they were offered half a dozen additional choices. A rating, at best, is an indication of how many people saw what you gave them. Unfortunately it does not reveal the depth of the penetration or the intensity of reaction, and it never reveals what the acceptance would have been if what you gave them had been better—if all the forces of art and creativity and daring and imagination had been unleashed. I believe in the people's good sense and good taste, and I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume. . . .

Certainly I hope you will agree that ratings should have little influence where children are concerned. The best estimates indicate that during the hours of 5 to 6 p.m., 60 percent of your audience is composed of children under twelve. And most young children today, believe it or not, spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. I repeat—let that sink in—most young children today spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. It used to be said that there were three great influences on a child: home, school and church. Today there is a fourth great influence, and you ladies and gentlemen control it.

If parents, teachers, and ministers conducted their responsibilities by following the ratings, children would have a steady diet of ice cream, school holidays, and no Sunday school. What about your responsibilities? Is there no room on television to teach, to inform, to uplift, to stretch, to enlarge the capacities of our children? Is there no room for programs deepening their understanding of children in other lands? Is there no room for a children's news show explaining something about the world to them at their level of understanding? Is there no room for reading the great literature of the past, teaching them the great traditions of freedom? There are some fine children's shows, but they are drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence, and more violence. Must these be your trademarks? Search your consciences and see if you cannot offer more to your young beneficiaries whose future you guide so many hours each and every day.

What about adult programming and ratings? You know, newspaper publishers take popularity ratings too. The answers are pretty clear; it is almost always the comics, followed by the advice-to-the-lovelorn columns. But, ladies and gentlemen, the news is still on the front page of all newspapers, the editorials are not replaced by more comics, the newspapers have not become one long collection of advice to the lovelorn. Yet newspapers do not need a license from the government to be in business—they do not use public property. But in television—where your responsibilities as public trustees are so plain—the moment that the ratings indicate that Westerns are popular, there are new imitations of Westerns on the air faster than the old coaxial cable could take us from Hollywood to New York. . . .

Let me make clear that what I am talking about is balance. I believe that the public interest is made up of many interests. There are many people in this great country, and you must serve all of us. You will get no argument from me if you say that, given a choice between a Western and a symphony, more people will watch the Western. I like Westerns and private eyes too—but a steady diet for the whole country is obviously not in the public interest. We all know that people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated or informed. But your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity as a test of what to broadcast. You are not only in show business; you are free to communicate ideas as well as relaxation. You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives. It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims—you must also serve the nation's needs. . . .

Let me address myself now to my role, not as a viewer but as chairman of the FCC. . .I want to make clear some of the fundamental principles which guide me.

First, the people own the air. They own it as much in prime evening time as they do at 6 o'clock Sunday morning. For every hour that the people give you, you owe them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service.

Second, I think it would be foolish and wasteful for us to continue any worn-out wrangle over the problems of payola, rigged quiz shows, and other mistakes of the past. . . .

Third, I believe in the free enterprise system. I want to see broadcasting improved and I want you to do the job. . . .

Fourth, I will do all I can to help educational television. There are still not enough educational stations, and major centers of the country still lack usable educational channels. . . .

Fifth, I am unalterably opposed to governmental censorship. There will be no suppression of programming which does not meet with bureaucratic tastes. Censorship strikes at the taproot of our free society.

Sixth, I did not come to Washington to idly observe the squandering of the public's airwaves. The squandering of our airwaves is no less important than the lavish waste of any precious natural resource . . . .

What you gentlemen broadcast through the people's air affects the people's taste, their knowledge, their opinions, their understanding of themselves and of their world. And their future. The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in mankind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities for good—and for evil. And it carries with it awesome responsibilities—responsibilities which you and I cannot escape.

I knew Gary Urton as a freshman at Eastern New Mexico University. He arose from those humble origins to win a MacArthur (Genius) Fellowship and then on to Harvard as a professor of anthropology. Urton has found a written language for the Incas - previously believed to be preliterate - in the form of knots. Youneverknow.

The Independent (London)

June 23, 2003, Monday

DID THE INCA COMMUNICATE THROUGH A COMPUTER CODE OF KNOTS?

BYLINE: STEVE CONNOR SCIENCE EDITOR


THEY RAN the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet the Inca, founded in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532.

But a leading scholar of South American antiquity believes the Inca did have a form of non-verbal communication written in an encoded language similar to the binary code of today's computers. Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information.

In the search for definitive proof of his discovery, which will be detailed in a book, Professor Urton believes he is close to finding the "Rosetta stone" of South America, a khipu story that was translated into Spanish more than 400 years ago. "We need something like a Rosetta khipu and I'm optimistic that we will find one," said Professor Urton, referring to the basalt slab found at Rosetta, near Alexandria in Egypt, which allowed scholars to decipher a text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics from its demotic and Greek translations.

It has long been acknowledged that the khipu of the Inca were more than just decorative. In the 1920s, historians demonstrated that the knots on the strings of some khipu were arranged in such a way that they were a store of calculations, a textile version of an abacus.

Khipu can be immensely elaborate, composed of a main or primary cord to which are attached several pendant strings. Each pendant can have secondary or subsidiary strings which may in turn carry further subsidiary or tertiary strings, arranged like the branches of a tree. Khipu can be made of cotton or wool, cross-weaved or spun into strings. Different knots tied at various points along the strings give the khipu their distinctive appearance.

Professor Urton's study found there are, theoretically, seven points in the making of a khipu where the maker could make a simple choice between two possibilities, a seven-bit binary code. For instance, he or she could choose between weaving a string made of cotton or of wool, or they could weave in a "spin" or "ply" direction, or hang the pendant from the front of the primary string or from the back. In a strict seven-bit code this would give 128 permutations (two to the power of seven) but Professor Urton said because there were 24 possible colours that could be used in khipu construction, the actual permutations are 1,536 (or two to the power of six, multiplied by 24).

This could mean the code used by the makers allowed them to convey some 1,536 separate units of information, comparable to the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Sumerian cuneiform signs, and double the number of signs in the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians and the Maya of Central America.

If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language. "They could have used it to represent a lot of information," he says. "Each element could have been a name, an identity or an activity as part of telling a story or a myth. It had considerable flexibility. I think a skilled khipu-keeper would have recognised the language. They would have looked and felt and used their store of knowledge in much the way we do when reading words."

There is also some anecdotal evidence that khipu were more than mere knots on a string used for storing calculations. The Spanish recorded capturing one Inca native trying to conceal a khipu which, he said, recorded everything done in his homeland "both the good and the evil". Unfortunately, in this as in many other encounters, the Spanish burnt the khipu and punished the native for having it, a typical response that did not engender an understanding of how the Inca used their khipu.

But Professor Urton said he had discovered a collection of 32 khipu in a burial site in northern Peru with Incan mummies dating from the time of the Spanish conquest. He hopes to find a khipu that can be matched in some way with a document written in Spanish, a khipu translation. He is working with documents from the same period, indicating that the Spanish worked closely with at least one khipu-keeper. "We have for the first time a set of khipu from a well-preserved and dated archaeological site, and documents that were being drawn up at the same time."

Without a "khipu Rosetta" it will be hard to convince the sceptics who insist that, at most, the knotted strings may be complicated mnemonic devices to help oral storytellers to remember their lines. If they are simple memory machines, khipu would not constitute a form of written language because they would have been understood only by their makers, or someone trained to recall the same story.

Professor Urton has little sympathy with this idea. "It is just not logical that they were making them for memory purposes," he said. "Tying a knot is simply a cue; it should have no information content in itself other than being a reminder." Khipu had layers of complexity that would be unnecessary if they were straightforward mnemonic devices, he said.

TRANSLATING THE SECRETS OF THE AGES

SUMERIAN CUNEIFORM

THE WORLD'S first written language was created more than 5,000 years ago, based on pictograms, or simplified drawings representing actual objects or activities. The earliest cuneiform pictograms were etched into wet clay in vertical columns and, later, more symbolic signs were arranged in horizontal lines, much like modern writing. Cuneiform was adapted by several civilisations, such as the Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians, to write their own languages, and used for 3,000 years. Many of the clay tablets, and the occasional reed stylus used to etch cuneiform on them, have survived. Knowledge of cuneiform was lost until 1835 when a British Army officer, Henry Rawlinson, found inscriptions on a cliff at Behistun in Persia. They were identical texts written in three languages - Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite - which allowed Rawlinson to make the first translation for many hundreds of years.

EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS

THE ORIGINAL hieroglyphs, dating from about 5,000 years ago, were etched on stone and were elaborate and time-consuming to make, which meant they were reserved for buildings and royal tombs. A simplified version, called hieratic, was eventually developed for everyday bureaucracy, written on papyrus paper.

Later still, hieratic was replaced by demotic writing, the everyday language of Egypt, which appeared on the Rosetta stone with Greek and hieroglyphic script, allowing scholars to translate the original Egyptian writing.

MAYAN HIEROGLYPHICS

THE MAYA used about 800 individual signs or glyphs, paired in columns that read from left to right and top to bottom. The glyphs could be combined to form any word or concept in the Mayan language and inscriptions were carved in stone and wood on monuments or painted on paper, walls or pottery. Some glyphs were also painted as codices made of deer hide or bleached fig-tree paper covered by a thin layer of plaster and folded like an accordion. The complete deciphering of the Mayan writing is only 85 per cent complete, although it has been made easier with the help of computers.

Only highly trained Mayan scribes used and understood the glyphs, and they jealously guarded their knowledge in the belief that only they should act as intermediates between the gods and the common people.

Steve Connor

[x NYTimes Magazine, June 22, 2003]

QUESTIONS FOR NEWT GINGRICH
Speak, History
Interview by MICHAEL CROWLEY

Q A novel you were co-writer of that imagines a Confederate victory at Gettysburg is just out. How would the world be different today if the battle turned out that way?

Well, we don't believe that winning Gettysburg means the South wins the war automatically. It's a three-volume alternative history, and we're exploring it on a couple of levels. One is, Can a brilliant tactical leader from an agrarian society win a fast-enough victory to offset the weight of an industrial society? The second thing we're exploring is the nature of command.
Advertisement

Is there any lesson from Gettysburg that you could apply to politics?

Have a command team that works well together. You could argue that the Bush-Cheney-Rove team is an example.

Is history the best place to find lessons about commanding and leading?

I would say history is the best place. But I also look at social anthropology, studies of animal behavior. There's a wonderful book by Frans de Waal called ''Chimpanzee Politics'' that I routinely recommend to people.

You can understand Washington by studying primates?

Listen, I tell Army officers they'll never see the Pentagon, the White House or the Congress the same after they read ''Chimpanzee Politics.''

Have you ever taken part in a Civil War re-enactment?

No. We're going to be up at Gettysburg next month. I'm probably going to dress as a reporter.

What does re-enacting as a reporter entail?

Just a fancy suit and shirt and tie. I had to pick either congressman or reporter, and I decided that reporters had more fun.

You were recently on Capitol Hill testifying about human longevity. What was that about? What is the secret to longevity?

Well, first of all, not dying. Just the fact that we're in a world where you have fewer people dying of infectious disease, of other kinds of problems -- people just live longer. I'm advocating that if you're going to have that many million people living to that age, you'd better rethink your whole system of health care, retirement.

Has your research taught you any specific health tips, like which vitamins we should take?

It's not complicated. Monitor what you take in and what you do. Keep your attitude positive. Optimists live longer -- that's really true statistically. Smiling is actually a healthy behavior.

When you testify before Congress, is it strange being on the other side of that dais? Do you find yourself impatient with long-winded questions?

No, no, no. An awful lot of these folks are my friends, and they treat me very, very well. I find partly because I was speaker and partly because they see me on Fox and partly because we have a book out, there's a seriousness that I'm very grateful for -- people approach me in a very serious way.

You're a historian. Is history repeating itself for George W. Bush, who is now threatened by a bad economy after a war in Iraq?

I think he clearly has to focus a lot on the question of what he's going to do about the economy. I think he has begun to focus on that.

So the ''tragedy'' of Bush senior won't recur as farce with Bush junior?

I'm not sure I want Karl Rove to know you even asked that question. I think George W. Bush understands the importance of focusing on domestic policy, and he is not likely to disengage.

Now that you're out of Congress, do you find yourself watching a lot of C-Span, wishing you could march onto the floor and tell someone off?

No. If I need to join the debate, I just go to Fox, and it seems to work out fine.

Hillary Clinton's own book has just come out. Do you feel competitive with her? Will you compare rankings on Amazon?

You almost slipped and said that both of our ''novels'' came out at the same time! Look, I'm not competitive with her. She is laying the base for a presidential campaign, and she wrote a book that attracted interest for obvious reasons. I wrote a historical novel that will attract a different kind of interest. Yesterday we were No. 1 on Amazon for fiction, so I'm very happy with how ''Gettysburg'' is doing in its own right. But it's a different market for a different reason.

Will you read her book?

No. I lived through that period.

Cadillac Ranch, January 2003

Cadillac Ranch, June 2003

Official Ant Farm Cadillac Ranch Page

On its 20th anniversary, we look back at the making of Texas' most famous roadside attraction.
by Anne Dingus (Texas Monthly magazine, July 1994)

Vintage and timeless, Cadillac Ranch just turned twenty years old. Ten Cadillacs headed west are buried hood-down in a row,their tail-fins silhouetted against the Panhandle sky: "The hood ornament of Route 66," as one of its creators dubbed it. Cadillac Ranch became a national symbol practically from the moment of its birth in a Texas wheat field in June 1974. The last monument Texans embraced so wholeheartedly was the Alamo. But Cadillac Ranch had its photographer; the Alamo had none.

Cadillac Ranch began as a collaboration between Amarillo's eccentric emeritus, Stanley Marsh 3, and a San Francisco-based designers collective called the Ant Farm. In 1970 Marsh had undertaken his first major pop art project, building what he called "the world's largest soft pool table" on a farm outside Amarillo; shortly thereafter, the Ant Farm was constructing its self-styled "house of the century" in Houston (which resembled a "praying mantis eating a Volkswagen," Marsh says). Eventually, the creators of both architectural whimsies exchanged letters. Next, Marsh offered a piece of land for a then-undetermined art project, and soon thereafter three members of the Ant Farm pulled off the interstate eight miles west of Amarillo to examine a featureless stretch of plain. Ant Farmer Doug Michels remembers the moment: "To me, it was a dolphin idea. Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and I were standing in a wheat field off Route 66 in the rain. And you know how the wheat waves and ripples in the wind? Well, suddenly we imagined a dolphin tail fin sticking up out of the wheat. Then the dolphin tail fin became a Cadillac tail fin. That was it. There was Cadillac Ranch."

Marsh loved the concept, particularly since the chosen site lay just off Route 66 (now Interstate 40). Twenty years later, he still waxes enthusiastic about the Cadillac Ranch credo, "What makes America the best country in the world is the car," he says. "In Germany, Africa, China, or Russia kids grow up thinking they'll have a house someday. But American kids dream that they'll have a car. A car represents freedom, romance, money. You can head west to Las Vegas, where you can break the bank, then go out to the beach in California and become a movie star."

The Ant Farmers proceeded to make their idea a reality. Marsh provided beer, money, wheel greasing, a red flatbed for hauling Caddies, and two photographers, Wyatt McSpadden and the late Don Reynolds. In the intervening two decades, the 41-year old McSpadden, who now lives in Austin, repeatedly photographed the Cadillac Ranch, even featuring it on his wedding invitation. Naturally, he took along his camera in June for the twentieth-anniversary party Marsh sponsored on-site (which included a chance for guests to spray-paint congratulatory messages on the freshly whitewashed cars). McSpadden's portraits of Cadillac Ranch as a monument have been widely reproduced. But the pictures on these pages—never before published—document the making, humorous and historical, of a genuine American icon.

Ben Sargent, 6/25/03

Ben Sargent - 1982 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning

Ben Sargent received the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 in editorial cartooning while at the Austin American-Statesman.

Sargent began his journalism career in his hometown of Amarillo while a student at Amarillo College (1966-1968). He then attended the University of Texas and graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 1970.

Early in his journalism career, he was a reporter with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Long News Service, the Austin American-Statesman and the UPI.

He has been the Austin American-Statesman’s political cartoonist since 1974.

Muckraking, 2003

This book - Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor In the American Black Market (2003) - by Eric Schlosser follows his Fast Food Nation. Where Schlosser talked about the hidden costs of fast food in our culture, he devotes this new book to strawberries, marijuana, and pornography. The costs are enormous to all of us.

Hello! Welcome to my world! Rather than send e-mail to my friends (and foes), I decided to enter the 21st century and publish a Web Log (Blog). Visit daily. Youneverknow.

NS