21st Century Texas History

It's no coincidence that Austin is the high tech (as well as the political) capital of Texas because of the founding of SEMATECH (SEmiconductor MAnufacturing TECHnology), a non-profit consortium that performs basic research into semiconductor manufacturing. It was conceived in 1986, formed in 1987, and began operating in 1988 in Austin as a partnership between the United States government and 14 U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers to solve common manufacturing problems and regain competitiveness for the U.S. semiconductor industry that had been surpassed by Japanese industry in the mid-1980s. SEMATECH was funded over 5 years by public subsidies coming from the US Department of Defense for a total of $500 million. Following a determination by SEMATECH's Board of Directors to eliminate matching funds from the U.S. government after 1996, the organization's focus shifted from the U.S. semiconductor industry to the larger international semiconductor industry, abandoning the initial U.S. government-initiative.[citation needed] During the mid 90's the organization's name was changed to International Sematech to reflect its international composition and in September of 2004, changed back to SEMATECH. Nearly half of the 15 current member companies in the SEMATECH consortia are non-US corporations.

SEMATECH currently has three subsidiaries, the Advanced Technology Development Facility (ATDF) established in 2004, the Advanced Materials Research Center (AMRC), and the International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI). Current consortium members include

1. AMD, USA
2. Freescale, USA
3. HP, USA
4. IBM, USA
5. Infineon/Qimonda, Germany
6. Intel, USA
7. Micron, USA
8. NEC, Japan
9. Panasonic, Japan
10. NXP (Philips), Netherlands
11. Renesas, Japan
12. Samsung, South Korea
13. Spansion, USA
14. Texas Instruments, USA
15. TSMC, Taiwan

It's also no coincidence that the oldest learning society in Texas (The Texas Historical Association) is at the forefront in the use of technology to further knowledge of the State of Texas. Texas State Historian (and President of the Texas State Historical Association) proclaimed the linkage of technology and Texas history in an Op-Ed piece in the today's (11/04/07) Austin daily. If this is (fair & balanced) prescience, so be it.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
Rethinking how Texas history is taught
By Frank de la Teja

Part of my charge as the first state historian of Texas is to encourage the teaching of Texas history in public schools, but we need to examine the way history is taught. Though the dramatic stories of the Texas Revolution and cattle ranching give rise to romantic and patriotic feelings, they leave huge gaps in the understanding of why Texas is what it is today.

More than 8 million Texans are of Hispanic origin, yet our schools largely ignore the two centuries Texas was under the rule of Spain and Mexico. Textbooks focus on the arrival of settlers from the United States, but, for many Texans, the heritage from south of the Rio Grande is one to which they can better relate. Additionally, numerous legal, economic and cultural practices of today's Texas have roots dating from the Spanish colonial period.

Only 1 percent of our population lives on farms and ranches, but much of the rest of Texas history that is taught concerns the state as an agricultural society. We need to reorient our presentation to include more of the state's 20th-century urbanization and industrialization of. The sweeping social and economic changes that have made us predominantly a state of city-dwellers, from the Civil Rights Movement to the space race, require changes not only in what we teach but in how we teach.

While we shift our focus to make the study of history relevant to our youths, what is missing in the textbooks can be found online. With just a few clicks of a mouse, our students — and anyone connected to the Internet — can find just about anything they want to know about Texas. In fact, computer users from throughout the world access 4 million pages of historical information each month, courtesy of the Texas State Historical Association and its Handbook of Texas Online. Now into its second century of existence, the "Oldest Learned Society in Texas" is embracing the Internet full-throttle. In addition to the 24,000 articles in The Handbook of Texas Online, the Texas State Historical Association will soon post the 54,000 pages from its century-old Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

For today's youths, a computer mouse is a natural extension of the hand. Until all of our schools embrace the entire rich and diverse story of Texas, the best way to share our historical heritage and values, as well as lessons learned from mistakes, might be to plug them into the best part of the Internet.

Dr. Jesús F. "Frank" de la Teja is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Texas State University. Also he is the first Texas State Historian and the current President of the Texas State Historical Association.

Copyright © 2007 The Austin American-Statesman

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Vintage Cobra

Watch an artist at work: The Cobra eviscerates Hillary before we become aware that The Cobra is carrying a knife. If this is (fair & balanced) drollery, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Gift of Gall
By Maureen Dowd

Girlfriend had a rough week.

First Hillary got brushed back by the boys in the debate. Then some women bemoaned Hillaryland’s “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” strategy.

The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus deplored the “antifeminist subtext” of Hillary’s campaign playing the woman-as-victim card. “Using gender this way,” she said, “is a setback.”

I must rush to a sister’s defense.

Women need to rally to support Hillary and send her money because there are men, men like Tim Russert, who have the temerity to ask her questions during a debate. If there are six male rivals on stage and two male moderators and heaven knows how many men manning lights and boom mikes, the one woman should have the right to have it two ways.

It’s simple math, really, an estrogen equation.

If she wants to run on her record as first lady while keeping the lid on her first lady record, that’s only fair for the fairer sex. And if she wants to have it both ways on illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses, then she should, especially if those illegal immigrants are men, or if Lou Dobbs is ranting on the issue, because he’s not only a man, he’s a grumpy, cranky, border-crazed man.

She should certainly be allowed to play the gender card two ways, or even triangulate it. As her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, said after the debate, she is “one strong woman,” who has dwarfed male rivals and shown she’s tough enough to deal with terrorism and play on the world stage. But she can break, just like a little girl, when male chauvinists are rude enough to catch her red-handed being slippery and opportunistic.

If the gender game worked when Rick Lazio muscled into her space, why shouldn’t it work when Obama and Edwards muster some mettle? If she could become a senator by playing the victim after Monica, surely she can become president by playing the victim now.

Sometimes when Hillary takes heat, she gets paranoid and controlling. But this time she took the heat by getting into the kitchen. After trying to have it both ways during the debate, she tried to have it both ways after the debate.

In New Hamphire on Friday, she stayed above the fray, saying that her male rivals are not “piling on” because she’s a woman but because she’s “winning.” Meanwhile, she let her aides below the fray stir up fem-outrage by putting a video on the campaign Web site called “The Politics of Pile On,” edited to highlight men ganging up on her to the tune of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.”

Mark Penn presided over a conference call on Wednesday to rally supporters to the idea of a fem-backlash, during which one devoted Ellen Jamesian suggested that Tim Russert “should be shot.” The woman quickly repented, not the sentiment, but the fact that she shouldn’t have said it on a conference call. (NBC security remained on high alert.)

Nothing should be sacred when it comes to rousing the women’s vote, especially the working-class women Hillary needs to carry her back to the White House. That may be why she recently blew off a Vogue photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz at the last minute, according to Liz Smith: to show solidarity with supporters who can’t afford Vogue frocks.

And remember the time Hillville used a Washington Post story about a sighting of the senator’s cleavage in the Senate to spearhead a fund-raising drive with women? Dollars for décolletage. Genius!

When pundettes tut-tut that playing the victim is not what a feminist should do, they forget that Hillary is not a feminist. If she were merely some clichéd version of a women’s rights advocate, she never could have so effortlessly blown off Marian Wright Edelman and Lani Guinier when Bill first got in, or played the Fury with Bill’s cupcakes during the campaign.

She was always kind enough to let Bill hide behind her skirts when he got in trouble with women. Now she deserves to hide behind her own pantsuits when men cause her trouble.

We underestimate Hillary if we cast her as Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s really Alfonse D’Amato. Not just the Senator Pothole role, but the talent for playing the aggrieved victim.

D’Amato pulled off a dramatic upset in ’92 against Robert Abrams, the New York attorney general, by pouncing when Abrams slipped one night and called D’Amato a “fascist.” Though never a sensitive soul about insulting other ethnic groups, D’Amato quickly cast “fascist” as an insult to Italian-Americans, producing an ad with scenes of Mussolini.

“It was sheer gall,” Anthony Marsh, D’Amato’s media consultant, proudly told The Times’s Alessandra Stanley.

Like Alfonse, Hillary has the gift of gall. She can be righteous while playing brass-knuckle politics. She will cozy up to former enemies she can use, like Matt Drudge and David Brock, and back W.’s bellicosity if it helps banish her old image as antimilitary.

There is nowhere she won’t go, so long as it gets her where she wants to be.

That’s the beauty of Hillary.

Maureen Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1999, with the Pulitzer committee particularly citing her columns on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton after his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Copyright © 2007 The New York Times Company

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