Tips on Arguing: Don't Exaggerate

Image by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

Arguments lend themselves to hyperbole, especially when they become heated. You’ve probably had an experience similar to this: you’re trying to prove a point to a friend who refuses to see the err of his or her ways. Out of frustration you begin to exaggerate the details of the situation, until your case begins to look like a matter of life-and-death. You finally convince the other person.

But as you walk away, a voice in the back of your mind tells you that your friend now has an over-inflated and oversimplified sense of the argument – that you’ve given him or her an inaccurate picture.

There’s a real danger to allowing the facts to get blown out of proportion. Like the children’s game of telephone, the next person your friend talks to is likely to get an even more warped version of the story than the one you told. After a few iterations, the idea itself may become utterly ridiculous to those who hear it – and the people who tell it may look like nuts.

Debates in the summer of 2009 over the nature of government-sponsored health care are a classic example of this. Folks on the political right who could have made viable arguments to defend their beliefs based on economics, constitutional principles, and common sense instead turned to exaggeration in order to rile the emotions of the electorate.

The result? Comparisons of president Obama’s administration to Nazism. Claims that Britain would have allowed Stephen Hawking to die, rather than pay to treat his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – despite the fact that Hawking is British. Protests about non-existent “death panels.” And ultimately, the complete loss of respect for the legitimate activists in the conservative arena, whose well-reasoned objections got drowned in the din.

It can be difficult to rein your arguments in when you feel passionate about something. If you don’t do it, though, you run the risk of undermining the validity of your entire position. Staying rooted firmly in the facts and avoiding uninformed speculation will, in the end, do more of a service for your argument than any overblown rhetoric.

The Inanity of Ethnicity

My wife was born in Uruguay, a Spanish-speaking constitutional republic with one of the most historically stable governments in South America. Uruguayans live in an European culture; all of the native populations were long ago eradicated from the Eastern banks of the Rio de la Plata.

My wife can trace her own family's lineage back to Spain, France, and other areas in Western Europe.

After a childhood in the capital of Montevideo, she spent significant portions of her youth in Italy and England, studying at Cambridge before coming to the United States.

In some ways, her time in Europe has distanced her from others who were born in Uruguay. Her accent is unaccountable - a truly global amalgam cobbled together of grade-school English lessons by Spanish-speaking teachers, training in the formal British style, and extended exposure to American idiom.

In other ways, though, she retains the vestigial traditions of her youth. When Uruguay's players became the only non-European team to advance to the semi-finals at the World Cup in 2010, she was as glued to the games as any fan at the Plaza Independencia. (Soccer is huge in Uruguay - they hosted and won the first-ever World Cup in 1930.)

At Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ during the annual cherry blossom festival.
Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

I am, on the other hand, more of a mutt. Although the bulk of my ancestors come from a virtual continental tour of northern and Western Europe, my father's side of the family also contains a dab of Native American. By any genealogical standard, my wife is the "dominant" European-American, and I am the ethnic minority.

Yet that is not how our society perceives us. I have pale skin, light brown hair, and a southern New England lilt. She has (slightly) darker skin, black-brown hair, and that inexplicable-but-unmistakable accent.

In this country, she receives the designation of "Hispanic," and I get labeled as the Caucasian. Never mind that neither of those terms has any logical meaning - we have to put something on the Census form.

When people meet us they immediately tailor their questions to their presumptions about our backgrounds. This occurs whether we're speaking with other "Hispanics" or "Caucasians."

Does that make us part of the growing trend of "interracial" marriage in the United States? As it is, first-generation Hispanic immigrants tend to view themselves as "white" at a higher rate than their own children do, making the question that much more intractable.

That these arbitrary (and often inaccurate) characterizations are still so entrenched into and codified by our institutions bothered me long before I got married, but they’ve grown more irksome to me since then. I didn’t fall in love with a Latina – I fell in love with a specific human being, unlike any other.

It is vital that we retain a historical memory of our past traditions, of course. It is helpful to know where you come from in order to understand the circumstances into which you are born.

But I also believe that each of us should be free to chart our own course from there. Ethnic identifications assure you of nothing about a person. I was born in Connecticut, yet I drink yerba mate, a caffeinated drink that's as popular in Uruguay as coffee is here. My wife, however, prefers uncaffeinated chamomile tea. Q.E.D.

Important Books: The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan in 1960. Photograph by Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer. Courtesy of Library of Congress New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.

The Feminine Mystique was the seminal book of the women’s movement of the 1960’s. Journalist Betty Friedan exploded a myth that had seeped into post-war American culture: that a woman’s greatest potential could be found in the role of housewife and mother, and that the pursuit of any other goals would detract from this glorified position in society.

A housewife and mother herself, Friedan had begun to notice in the late 1950’s that many of the women she spoke to felt trapped and useless, though they couldn’t explain why. Many were middle-class, college-educated, with well-off husbands, healthy children, and beautiful homes in the growing suburbs. They had everything that they had been told they should want as women, most having voluntarily left college and career to start families. Yet they were, as Friedan noted, “desperate.”

The Feminine Mystique systematically deconstructs the image of the “happy housewife hero,” exploring its roots in pseudo-psychology, advertising, and the residual sexual segregationist attitudes that had pushed back against the suffrage movement that won women the vote in the United States in 1920. The mystique, she argues, encourages self-imposed cultural oppression.

Just underneath the veneer of the mystique, however, much darker trends were forming: increases in suicides, alcoholism, tranquilizer use, and other problems. Friedan argues in the book that these propensities were damaging not only to women, but to men and society as a whole.

At times, Friedan lets speculation carry her a little too far. She blames the mystique for the increasingly “overt manifestations” of homosexuality in men, positing that it causes women to engage in a “passive, childlike immaturity which is passed on from mothers to sons…” At one point, she even wonders whether the apparent rise in psychological disorders such as autism are a product of the mystique (though she is careful in this instance to point out that the experts suspected that earlier and better diagnosis was the most likely explanation).

Such speculation only shows that Friedan was, as she says of Sigmund Freud’s own mistaken explanations of Victorian women, “a prisoner of his culture.” Homosexuality was still listed in medical texts as a psychological disease, and autism was only beginning to be understood. On most matters, the book is perceptive and challenging – and did such an apt job of putting words to the inexpressible malaise so many women at the time were feeling that it helped spark a major social revolution.

Tips on Arguing: Avoid Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is generally defined as saying one thing while doing something that contradicts it. It can be summed up in the phrase, “practice what you preach.”

Safeguarding against hypocrisy is a boost to any argument you make. When you profess to believe in something, people will look for concrete examples of that belief. If they see that you aren’t following your own example, then they may conclude that you have some other motive for what you say, such as getting money or support from a certain group.

Just because someone acts hypocritically doesn’t mean that his or her argument is invalid. A smoker who discourages her children from smoking has good reasons for doing so. Those reasons are not cancelled out by the smoker’s habit.

Hypocrisy does, however, tend to undermine the arguer by complicating his or her claims, and that’s why it helps to avoid acting contradictorily.

Avoiding hypocrisy can be more difficult than it sounds at first. In the course of our lives, we frequently change our positions on multiple issues. Someone who is a heroin addict at 18 but becomes a drug counselor at 28 might be accused of hypocrisy. Strictly speaking, though, the accusation would be wrong – the former addict’s change of action would be consistent with his change of opinion.

There are also different levels of hypocrisy. For example, the Connecticut Post published an assessment of Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s “greenness” on Earth Day. Finch was quoted as saying that he liked taking the train to keep his carbon footprint low. Yet according to the article, Finch had opted to fly (a much less fuel-efficient method of travel) on three out of five trips over the past year to Washington, D.C. He only took the train twice.

If this is a major hypocrisy, another note from the article could be thought of as a minor contradiction: Finch’s family composts most of their biodegradable waste. On the day that the reporter was in his home, though, there were some cornhusks in the trash.

If the occasional item misses the compost pile, does it negate the vast majority that makes it in?

Finch admits that he’s “not perfect.” Perhaps in the quest to eliminate hypocrisy, it’s best to realize that his statement applies to all of us.

Did the Dutch Influence America's Governmental Institutions?

New Amsterdam, the early Dutch settlement that would later become New York as it appeared in 1651. The drawing appeared in Arnoldus Montanus's "De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld" in 1671.

Although the Netherlands had begun to colonize the North American continent as early as 1609 (1), they remained a minority ethnic enclave in the New York and New Jersey areas throughout the pre-unification days preceding the Revolutionary War. They were already under British rule by the time of American Independence, and had adjusted somewhat to certain English sentiments.

Many Dutch colonists nonetheless retained some of the ideas brought from their former homeland. Furthermore, American merchants, intellectuals, and politicians were well aware of Dutch culture, and the colonies had been on friendly terms with Holland for much of their history. Such contact and knowledge carries with it a high likelihood that the process of American nation-building was influenced by Dutch precedents. John Adams himself wrote that, “The originals of the two republics [Dutch and American] are so much alike that a page from one seems but a transcript from the other...” (2)

During the Revolutionary War, the Dutch colonists were instrumental in the patriots’ victory. In his article “The Dutch-American Guerrillas of the American Revolution,” William Marina notes that “the most accurate appraisal is that the Jersey Dutch Whig majority was solidly in favor of defending American rights.”

“Early in 1775,” he says, “New Jersey was one of those states that made the transition from Royal to revolutionary government ‘without the firing of a gun.’” (3)

Despite years of good relations with England, the Netherlands also sided with the Americans during the fight for independence. George M. Welling explains in his book The United States of America and the Netherlands:

“The city of Amsterdam in the meantime, however, started its negotiations with the Americans in secret. A plan was drafted for a treaty of trade and friendship to become effective as soon as Holland would recognize the independence of the United States. But by then relations between Holland and England had deteriorated still further on the issue of the Dutch trade with the rebels. When England got hold of a copy of the secret treaty, it used it as a pretext to declare war on the Netherlands.” (4)

Holland was the second country (after France) to join the battle on the American side, and it was the second to officially recognize American Independence, in 1782 (5). From both inside and out, the Dutch played a pivotal part in the actual effort that made the U.S. a sovereign society in the first place.

When the war ended and America was left with the task of constructing a constitution for itself, all delegates, including those from New York and New Jersey, contributed. The Dutch colonies had been lost to the British in 1664 (6). However, these colonists stayed connected to Holland and did not forget some of the peculiar institutions they had brought with them. One freedom this ethnic group had brought which did not exist in England was the free press. This concept was one of the tools used to spark and fuel the Revolution, and later made it into the first Amendment of the Bill of Rights (7).

Also present in the First Amendment are the words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…’ (8) Although religious tolerance was promoted in a few other colonies, the level of religious liberty granted by the Constitution most closely follows the precedent set by New Netherland. According to Eric Foner, author of Give Me Liberty: An American History, “Most striking was the religious freedom that attracted to New Netherland a population far more diverse than the Chesapeake or New England… Religious toleration was extended not only to Protestants but also Catholics and, grudgingly, to Jews.” (9)

Some sources have attributed a myriad of other early American institutions to Dutch origins. In 1915, The Nation published a review of a paper written by H. A. Van C. Torchiana titled “Holland: An Historical Essay.” Torchiana is said to have enumerated a number of colonial inheritances:

“Even in American pre-national and colonial days, ‘we find a certain unity of political ideas’ – freedom of religious belief, proclaimed by William the Silent in 1577; ‘no taxation without representation,’ enunciated by the Netherlands in 1477; a comprehensive school system supported by taxation, easily traced in Holland to the thirteenth century and made general after the Reformation; written Constitutions, of which the Union of Utrecht, made in 1579, was one; and the supremacy of the judiciary, which in the low countries was a fixed principle in the time of Charles V.” (10)

Critics meanwhile have downplayed the strength of the connections between the American and Dutch societal developments. Sydney George Fisher argued instead that American institutions were the organic and unique products of individual circumstances. He believed that conscious influence on the Constitution by Dutch example is highly overrated:

“If it really had been an imitation from the Dutch, there would be some evidence of it in the debates of the Constitutional Convention. The Dutch resemblance would have been urged by some as a reason in its favor and by others as a reason against it. Afterwards, when the Constitution was before the people for adoption and closely discussed and criticised in numerous pamphlets and newspapers, the Dutch imitation, if there had been one, would have been surely referred to either by friends or by enemies.” (11)

Americans may not have had the Netherlands specifically in mind when they formed their new government. Even so, it is clear that Holland had at least an indirect impact on the American system. After all, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees “every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” (12) Years before, the Netherlands had been the first to pioneer such a foundational administrative style.

References:

1. Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Seagull Edition, Volume 1. (New York: Norton and Company, 2006) 74
2. Adams, Charles Francis. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Vol. VII. (Boston: Little, Borwn and Company, 1852) 400
3. William Marina. “The Dutch-American Guerillas of the American Revolution.” May 1, 1983.
4. George M. Welling. The United States of America and the Netherlands.
5. Ibid.
6. Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Seagull Edition, Volume 1. (New York: Norton and Company, 2006) 83
7. Constitution of the United States of America.
8. Ibid.
9. Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Seagull Edition, Volume 1. (New York: Norton and Company, 2006) 75-76
10. Paul Elder. “Origins of American Institutions.” Published in The Nation. October 28, 1915. 523
11. Sydney George Fisher. The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott, 1897)
12. Constitution of the United States of America.

Mineralogy at Sterling Hill

This is the first of three pieces about the Sterling Hill Mining Museum. This article focuses on the mineral collection. The next post will explore the history of the mine, and the final installment will explain what visitors can expect to find at the museum today.

I am fortunate to be married to someone who shares my enthusiasm for science. This year, my wife and I spent a weekend at the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, NJ for our two-year anniversary.

The museum is located on the grounds of what was formerly one of the most productive zinc mines in the state. It is also the “world capital” of fluorescent minerals – the area has produced over 80 varieties, and others may still be buried, undiscovered, in sections of the hillsides.

When operation costs drove the mine out of business in the 1980's, it was converted into a center for education about history and science. The primary focus is on geology and mineralogy, but there are displays to teach visitors about such things as chemistry, and the Ellis Astronomical Observatory also makes its home on the property.

In addition to minerals from the local mines, Sterling Hill hosts a huge collection of rare and interesting minerals from all over the world, many of them fluorescent.

On Friday night, we were treated to a tour of the mines by longtime museum volunteer Bill Kroth, followed by a session at the telescope he runs. On Saturday, we again visited the museum.

Willemite (Zn2SiO4) is the most common fluorescent mineral found in the Sterling Hill mine. Indeed, the predominance of this form of zinc silicate ore makes the Franklin and Sterling Hill mines unique.

A large sheet of willemite (green) with fluorescent calcite (red) from the mine.

A slab of sphalerite (ZnS), garnet and hornblende found 900 feet below ground in the Sterling Hill mine. Sphalerite is one of the main precursors of willemite. It is transformed through one of two means: by oxidation in a siliceous (silicon-rich) environment, or by alteration from hydrothermal veins. New Jersey's willemite was made via the latter process.

Willemite lining the walls of the mine.

Scheelite (CaWO4) from Trumbull, CT. The fluorescence is due to tungstate ions.

Meionite (Ca4Al6Si6O24(CO3)) from Grenville, Quebec. It fluoresces yellow in short-wave ultraviolet (UV) light, and red in long-wave UV light.

One of several unusual malachite (Cu2(CO3)(OH)2) samples. This piece originated from Lubumbashi in the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The area is known for its copper, in which malachite typically forms.

Fluorite (CaF2) embedded in calcite (CaCO3) from the Nikolaeskiy mine in Dal'negorsk, Primorskiy Kray, Russia.

This calcite specimen comes from the Romanian mining town of Cavnic.

The Deadliest Chemical

It's in your home, in the air, and in virtually every aquifer on the planet. It contributes to the spread of diseases and the destruction of weather disasters. It directly kills thousands of people each year.

Several municipalities have tried and failed to ban dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) over the last twenty years. Yet neither the FDA nor the EPA are likely to curtail its omnipresence any time soon.

That's because DHMO is just a rarely used chemical name for water. The effort to ban it was part of a popular hoax perpetrated in the 1990’s meant to demonstrate the public’s lack of scientific knowledge.

In 1994, University of California, Santa Cruz student Craig Jackson advanced the hoax and created what would become dhmo.org, a parody website that approaches water as if it were a dangerous chemical. Among other hazards, the website lists the following reasons to be wary:

- Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
- Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
- Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
- DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
- Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
- Contributes to soil erosion.
- Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
- Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
- Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
- Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
- Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
- Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
- Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia

What is most interesting about this pseudoscientific approach is that, despite two decades of fame, the joke continues to cause alarm among those who fail to do the most basic background research. According to a 2004 article by the Associated Press, city council officials in the town of Aliso Viejo, California became so concerned about it when a misinformed paralegal brought the matter to their attention, “that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.”

As recently as 2007, the New Zealand Herald reported that Otago Prime Minister Jacqui Dean tried to ban DMHO in her province. She was the second MP in the country to get behind such a campaign without knowing what was really being supported.

Although it was meant to be lighthearted, the DHMO phenomenon bears the typical hallmarks of other serious campaigns that have pseudoscientific foundations. It's a revealing – if frightening - insight into how some politicians and activists operate. Understanding why anti-DHMO arguments make no sense can help us to see how skewing the facts can lead to faulty conclsions.

First, we must break the argument down into its component parts, since it is actually two separate claims. The first is that DMHO is a dangerous chemical, and the second, that it ought to be banned.

While all of the points that Jackson makes on his website are technically correct, they misdirect the reader by needlessly stoking fears that would be uncalled for if one knew the actual nature of the substance. In truth, common sense keeps us safe from many of water’s hazardous effects, while allowing us to enjoy its vast range of benefits.

Take, for instance, the claim that DHMO is found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions. This fact means nothing on its own, but many who read it are liable to conflate correlation with causation, assuming that because it was found in tumors, it must be contributing to disease. Upon closer scrutiny, even the correlation is weak – otherwise one would expect to find that consuming less water would decrease the incidence of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions, which it does not.

This is the same kind of mistake that anti-vaccination proponents make about thimerosal and autism. Removal of the preservative did not cause autism rates to fall, but the assumption of causation remains prevalent among groups opposed to vaccines. Such diversions can have a far higher cost than the risk posed by the products being railed against, as evidenced by the needless resurgence of measles and other preventable diseases in wealthy countries like the U.S. and the U.K.

DMHO does become dangerous in certain situations. Boiling water can burn you; floods, hurricanes, and blizzards (all of which contain a lot of water) have killed thousands throughout history.

Under normal conditions, however, our interactions with water are quite safe. We drink it, bathe in it, and swim in it. If we consider the ratio between our safe encounters with water and the encounters that do us harm, the relative risk is extremely small.

This does not mean, however, that risks ought to be ignored. We are taught from a young age not to stick our hands in boiling water, not to keep electrical appliances near our bathtubs, and to stay indoors during hurricanes. These precautionary measures are important, though they only account for a small piece of the overall picture.

Once we understand the relative safety of water, it appears evident that it should not be banned. Moreover, because the benefits of interacting with water (it is largely responsible for our continued survival) far outweigh the potential risks, such legislative mandates could only cause more harm to citizens than good.

In the case of DHMO, it should also be mentioned that the sheer infeasibility of a ban ought to stop any legislation before it gets off the ground. How does one make rain illegal? It is in exploring this aspect of the process, in fact, where many of the government officials who get duped into campaigning against water find out that they’ve erred.

Pseudoscience is a two-way street; the interpretation of the facts often matters as much as their presentation. If fallacious logic and cleverly cherry-picked facts can lead to unfounded fears about something as obviously benign as water, it should be no surprise that people fall prey to misrepresentations of more complex issues, such as vaccination, evolution and climate change.

Memorial Day Parade Comes to Stratford: Photos

Stratford veterans wave at onlookers from atop an eagle-adorned float.

Members of the Stratford High band.

Students from Wilcoxson Elementary School carry the fifty states across Stratford.

Cub scouts ride down the street in their pine-box derby racers.

The line of parade marchers passes under the train tracks.

The parade is an advertising opportunity for some local businesses.

Street vendors spend every Memorial Day trekking up and down the streets.

The Creek tribe’s representatives toss candy to children waiting on the sidelines.

The Kickapoo tribe’s bubble machine.

Kids scramble for candy as the parade moves on.

All photographs by Brandon T. Bisceglia

Predictions, Patents and Politics in the Birth of News Radio

During his lifetime, science fiction writer Jules Verne dreamed up many futuristic technologies that could be used to explore new territories and expand the social progress of the human race. Over and over again, his imagined inventions became reality, often being used in an uncannily similar fashion to the way that he first described them.

One of Verne's most interesting conceptions was that of a new kind of news delivery system that involved reporters reading the news directly to their audiences – what we would now recognize as live news broadcasting. At the time he wrote about this upcoming technique, he placed it a thousand years into the future.

Little did he realize that several inventors were already on the cusp of creating the devices that would lead to the era of radio broadcasting. It would take less than half a century before newsrooms around the world were doing almost exactly what Verne had described. Radio technology would become so popular, in fact, that it would lead to a 40-year battle between two intellectual heavyweights over patent filings that would determine who got credit for the invention.

In 1889, Verne published a fanciful essay in the Forum titled “In the Year 2889” that walked the reader through a day in the life of a news baron named Fritz Napoleon Smith who owned the world's largest daily “paper,” the Earth Chronicle. Smith was so successful in part because he had developed a novel system for delivering the news to subscribers:

“Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers, who, in interesting conversations with reporters, statesmen, and scientists, learn the news of the day. Furthermore, each subscriber owns a phonograph, and to this instrument he leaves the task of gathering the news whenever he happens not to be in a mood to listen directly himself. As for purchasers of single copies, they can at a very trifling cost learn all that is in the paper of the day at any of the innumerable phonographs set up nearly everywhere.”

Image courtesy of wondersmith.com/scifi

Verne wrote that Smith had created this system of news delivery in his own era with the aid of “telephony,” which had been developed only one hundred years previously. In both the mode of delivery and the amount of time it would take to become reality he was mistaken.

Alexander Graham Bell had already spoken through the first working telephone to his associate, Thomas Watson, in March of 1876. Verne no doubt knew about the breakthrough, as over a decade had already passed by the time of his story. Although he did not specify how his version of telephony worked, it seems likely that Verne thought of it as a strictly “wired” technology, since that was still the primary way in which electrical impulses were being transmitted at the time.

Indeed, the New York Times reported in 1880 that new uses were being found for the telephone on a constant basis. One such use was involved reporters in Parliament for the London Times reading their reports directly to the compositor in the print office. “As the reporter in Parliament reads,” the article said, “the compositor in the printing office sets the type.”

It would not be a great leap from person-to-person calls to what might be termed a live “conference call” with reporters. Moreover, if Verne had been aware of the ambient way in which radio waves propagate, he is less likely to have posited that the news service could control subscriptions – anyone with a receiver can listen in on radio transmissions for free, rendering Verne's proposed business model obsolete.

There were people working on wireless systems around the time of Verne's publication, though. Nikola Tesla was one such inventor; Guglielmo Marconi was another. These two men would both file patents at the end of the nineteenth century for the key components of the radio.

U.S. Patent No. 645,576, for a “System of Transmission of Electrical Energy” was filed by Tesla in 1897 and approved on March 20, 1900. In it, he described a series of discoveries that he and other engineers had made about the ability of electrical impulses to pass unobstructed through the air. By devising a novel transmission-receiver apparatus with tightly wrapped conducting coils, he found that he was able to make use of this mode of electrical transport. He wrote:

“Expressed briefly, my present invention, based upon these discoveries, consists then in producing at one point an electrical pressure of such character and magnitude as to cause thereby a current to traverse elevated strata of the air between the point of generation and a distant point at which the energy is to be received and utilized.”
Tesla also noted that the devices could be rendered portable. He immediately saw a number of possible applications for his device, including to “transmit intelligible messages to great distances.”

Meanwhile, over in England, Marconi was working on a similar invention. Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company received its first patent 1896. But when he brought it to the United States in November of 1900, he was rejected by the Patent Office because of Tesla's previous filing. He continued to file revised versions, which were all thrown out.

But Marconi wasn't beat yet. He made connections with investors, including Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie, who put their substantial weight behind Marconi's company on the stock market. The Patent Office reversed its decision on Marconi's patent without explanation in 1904, and he went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1911. Tesla sued Marconi in retaliation in 1915.

It was not until 1943 – after Tesla had died – that he finally won recognition for his invention. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent, in part because Marconi's company was suing the U.S. Government for use of its patents during World War I.

Whether by Tesla or Marconi, the radio had been born. However, its potential in the news world – the application that Verne had envisioned – did not come to pass until several decades after the patent battles had begun.

Then, on November 2, 1920, radio manufacturer Westinghouse's KDKA station used the Associated Press's election returns to broadcast the results of the presidential race between Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James Cox from the top of the Pittsburgh Post's building. It was the fulfillment of Verne’s prophecy, a mere thirty years after he predicted it.

Within another decade, the radio phenomenon would be in full bloom. By the end of the century, newsrooms all over the world would look much like Smith’s, with reporters at stations reading live events out to the world as they happened. The news industry would also be populated with a myriad of technologies that Verne never predicted: television and the Internet would dominate the field, producing copious amounts of content for the world’s eager news consumers. In an ironic twist, telephones themselves eventually went wireless; today they represent a burgeoning new platform for news media. Radio, too, thrives among the milieu. Indeed, the world of 2011 is much richer than the world of 2889 that Verne imagined.

Posting More of Less

I never intended this blog to be a professional endeavor. I created it for finished thoughts, essays, and tidbits that didn’t fit neatly elsewhere.

As a result, my posting is sporadic. Most months, I might add two or three pieces. So far in 2011, there were no updates for February or April.

Thinking about this has led me to a now-common conundrum. As a writer, I prefer to toil in privacy, revising and retooling until the work is as precisely organized I can manage. But if I want to be noticed in the digital culture, I need to be putting out more material in places like this more regularly.

More material doesn’t mean better material; even the best blogs sacrifice finely tuned artful writing for roundups, updates, and links. It doesn’t mean that they’re badly written, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re useless. But they do exhibit an “unfinished” quality that was largely discouraged in the days of print culture.

Scarce resources used to restrict authors and publishers from putting anything out that hadn’t been vetted by multiple parties. That’s changing now that everyone with an Internet connection can type up unending missives for free.

The rise of Internet speech has cluttered the field for professional writers of all sorts, making competition stiffer and creating a feedback loop that increases demand for content.

There’s a limit to how much one person can do; past a certain point, even the best writer’s work will begin to suffer if he or she is too stretched.

Many of us cut corners to meet the new demands: a journalist spins one story into five different versions for various platforms. An author blogs parts of the book that he or she is working on, thus drumming up interest in advance of its release.

But most of this content would have been considered a kind of offal in an earlier era. The repetitions, reconfigurations and drafting all used to be part of the private process that would, after much effort, result in a finished public piece. Most of the time, those earlier notes and drafts would get tossed or filed on a dusty back shelf. Today they are front and center – and will be open to scrutiny for as long as the web lasts.

I’ve resisted contributing to this milieu partially because my thinking follows the print paradigm; I want my work to be the best it can be before anyone sees it (except perhaps a trusted advisor or relative).

Perhaps I should change my methodology, though. It may be too twentieth century.

On Wings of Wax

Flowers for Algernon, Awakenings, and Man's Brief Moments in the Sun

A comparison between the thematic arc of Daniel Keyes's fictional story Flowers for Algernon and the real-life accounts of post-encephalatic patients written by Dr. Oliver Sacks in Awakenings. This was originally given as a presentation for a course in science fiction as literature.

Tips on Arguing: Quote Mining

Quote mining is the alteration of the meaning of a person’s quote by taking it out of context or removing sections of the quote. It’s a disingenuous way to make it look like something someone said supports your position when, in fact, it does not.

Quote mining is easy to do if you’re creative about it. Consider the following passage:

“One day when we were kids, Charlie spent the afternoon stepping on ants in the driveway. He came into the house that evening with a guilty expression on his face. When his mother asked what was wrong, he admitted, ‘I’m a horrible person. I committed murder today! Poor ants.’”

In context, this passage is about an innocent child coming to terms with the world beyond himself.

Suppose now that you wanted to make Charlie seem more nefarious. By cutting out just a few choice sections, you could twist the meaning:

"He [Charlie] came into the house that evening with a guilty expression on his face. When his mother asked what was wrong, he admitted, ‘I’m a horrible person. I committed murder today!'"

Technically, the new quote is correct - the words are the same as the original. But notice how choosing to remove certain contextualizing phrases has corrupted our understanding of Charlie as a "murderer."

Academic creationists have become notorious for quote mining - so much so that the term came into popular language among scientists in the 1990's to describe how their own quotes were being dishonestly used to suggest that they had doubts about the validity of evolutionary science.

In 1996, biochemist and high-profile creationist Michael Behe published a popular book called Darwin's Black Box, which argued among other things that evolution could not account for certain biological structures, such as the bacterial flagellum. These parts, he claimed, were "irreducibly complex" - that is, if you removed any one piece, the whole thing would cease to function (a presumption that was promptly debunked by other biologists).

Behe tried to shore up his case by including numerous quotes in his book from evolutionary scientists that seemed to show how shaky the science of evolution was. On page 29, he quoted from a paper co-authored by Professor of Evolutionary Biology Jerry Coyne:

"We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak."

Coyne responded quickly. In the February 1997 issue of the Boston Review, he wrote, "I went back to see exactly what Orr [Coyne's co-author] and I had written. It turns out that, in the middle of our sentence, Behe found a period that wasn't there."

What the paper had originally said was: "Although a few biologists have suggested an evolutionary role for mutations or large effect (Gould 1980; Maynard Smith 1983: Gottlieb, 1984; Turner, 1985), the neo-Darwinian view has largely triumphed, and the genetic basis of adaptation now receives little attention. Indeed, the question is considered so dead that few may know the evidence responsible for its demise.

"Here we review this evidence," the paper continued. "We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation."

Coyne added, "By inserting the period (and removing the sentence from its neighbors), Behe has twisted our meaning. Our discussion of one aspect of Darwinism--the relative size of adaptive mutations--has suddenly become a critique of the entire Darwinian enterprise. This is not sloppy scholarship, but deliberate distortion."

Quote mining is effective because few people ever go back to read the original sources. It's easy to do, since all quotes require selecting certain sentences to keep and others to omit. The goal, however, should always be accuracy. Mining for quotes does disservice to the reader, misrepresents the person being quoted, and makes the quote miner look more like a dishonest ditch digger.

What Americans Are Missing

Left: Jose Socrates (Reuters) Right: Smokey the Cat (Gather)

Portugal’s Prime Minister Jose Socrates resigned Wednesday night after Parliament rejected his proposed austerity measures for the country, prompting renewed worries about sovereign debt in the Euro Zone. The collapse of Portugal’s government means that it may become the third country in the EU after Greece and Ireland to require a bailout from its neighbors.

I decided after hearing about this to check Yahoo! News’s top stories, just to see what they thought the most important things for their readers to know about were. I used Yahoo! as a source because many people I know look there for news, and because it’s targeted at the “average” American audience.

Portugal was conspicuously absent from their feed. What was so compelling that it took precedence over a brewing international debt crisis? Here were the ten “winning” headlines:

- Mysterious moment during NHL game
- Smart, simple skin care tips for guys
- Is Smokey the loudest cat in the world?
- How Elizabeth Taylor became an icon
- Surprising write-offs the IRS allows
- [Michael] Jordan’s cool promise to his college team
- 119-year-old not recognized as oldest
- How Olsen twins created $1 billion empire
- ‘Uglytecture’ flaunts worst of NYC condos
- High tech cloud will cool World Cup fans

Can we say “penchant for frivolity?”

The Orphaned Meme

Who Says We Get the Government We Deserve?

In a 2008 episode of the Fox suspense series, 24: Redemption, newly-elected American president Allison Taylor stands before the throng to deliver her inaugural speech. In what is meant to be a philosophical moment for Madame President, she trots out an aphorism that has become incredibly familiar in modern parlance:

“In every democracy, people get the government they deserve.”

Taylor gives credit for the quote to the famous French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville.

She (or, more accurately, the screenwriters) had apparently not done her homework. Although de Toqueville wrote hundreds of pages on democracy, he never penned that particular string of words.

The folks at Fox aren’t the first or only ones to have baselessly perpetuated the myth that this quote belongs to de Tocqueville. A quick Google search reveals that the false credit is bandied in all kinds of blogs, forums, and other niches of the web.

De Tocqueville isn’t the only supposed author, either (though he seems to be the most popular). Suggestions have included such prominent figures as Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. Of course, none of these attributions contain citations to primary sources.

So where did the quote really come from?

It’s tough to say, but the line bears a striking resemblance to a quote from a letter written by French politician and philosopher Joseph de Maistre in 1811. His son, Rodolphe, published the letter posthumously in 1853 as part of a collection of his father’s writings called Lettres et opuscules inédits. At one point, de Maistre remarks, “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle merite” (“Every nation has the government it deserves”).

Lithograph of a painting by Pierre Bouillon (1776-1831); lithograph probably by François Le Villain, who was active around the same time. Public domain image.

The original point of the comment seems to have been forgotten. De Maistre had been speaking of the Russian czarist government, not of democracies. He was criticizing the value of written constitutions by pointing out that successive leaders of the Russian state would reverse the policies of their predecessors based on their own whims.

De Maistre would be vexed to see his words used as a call for the people to guide political policy: he was one of the most vocal members of the counter-enlightenment in Europe, and dead-set against the democratic revolutions going on at the time. De Maistre believed in the reinstitution of hereditary monarchy in France, guided by what he thought to be the divine hand of the Christian church. He was a proponent of hierarchical authoritarian government, not democracy.

De Maistre’s critiques of the Russian state blamed the lack of moral education among the clergy for that government’s vicissitude. He wrote:

“Between a Russian pope and an organ-pipe I see no great difference; both emit sound, and that is all. I have repeatedly asked intelligent Russians whether means might not be found to civilize the clergy, to introduce it into society, to get rid of that disfavour which now more than ever attaches to it, and to make it of use for education, public morality, &c.”

He concluded that without the moral guidance of an educated church, the Russian people could not handle the reforms toward Westernization that had become so attractive to the Russian leaders of the era. (St. Petersburg was the capital at the time, and had been built a century earlier as part of a bid to put the country in closer contact with Europe.)

By 1879, six editions of Lettres et opuscules inédits had been printed. That year, The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature reprinted a commentary on de Maistre’s letters that had originally appeared in the Quarterly Review; de Masitre’s famously cynical comment was mentioned in both.

Modified versions of this quote begin appearing shortly after the publication of the letters in the second half of the nineteenth century, and were passed around from there in something reminiscent of a protracted game of 'telephone.' It wasn’t long before the words had been twisted to make them sound - as faux-president Taylor intended them to be taken – like a call for citizens living in participatory democracies to be vigilant against corruption.

In 1920, for instance, an article in The Blacksmiths Journal retold a sermon given by Arthur Brisbane decrying the excessive political power being wielded by privately owned railroads in the United States.

“It need not surprise you, for the United States is only just beginning an extremely interesting career of industrial feudalism,” Brisbane said, “with dollars for the soldiers, financiers for generals and a hundred millions of citizens for the ‘conquered populations.’”

Brisbane added that the situation was merely a reflection of Americans’ values: “Do the hundred millions deserve anything better? They do not. People get exactly the government they deserve.”

Similarly, a 1922 edition of the theological publication, the Homiletic Review, featured a discussion on the reasons for the decline of the nation of Judah. In an interesting parallel of de Maistre’s own top-down thinking, the author cited the moral deterioration of religious leadership as the first cause of the ancient culture’s ruin. Ironically, though, the infamous phrase was not invoked in this section of the essay (if it had, it would have aligned closely with de Maistre’s own meaning). Instead, it appeared in its new role, implicating the common people in Judah's decay:

“If good leaders are necessary, so also are good people. It is often said that people get the government they deserve: certainly in a democratic country the government must be a more or less faithful reflection of the tastes and character of the people; for any national catastrophe the latter, no less than the former, must bear a very heavy share of the blame.”

As indicated by this passage, the phrase had already evolved into a popular expression under the changed meaning.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the expression, now completely altered in implication, was being paraphrased by writers of all kinds. One such use occurred in 1942, when science fiction author A. E. van Vogt published a short story called The Weapon Shop.

The main character of van Vogt’s story discovers that an underground society of rebels is engaged in a secret war with the ruling empire in which he lives. As his alliance to the empress dissolves, a member of the rebel faction explains the crux of their philosophy to him:

"People always have the kind of government they want. When they want change, they must change it. As always we shall remain an incorruptible core ...of human idealism, devoted to relieving the ills that arise under any form of government."

This call to action is almost the complete opposite of what de Maistre would have recommended. Yet even under such loose phrasing, the basic syntax and structure bear his mark.

Just because the expression as it's understood today contradicts the original intent doesn't mean that the modern understanding carries any less truth behind it. However, neither de Maistre nor his thoughts should be misrepresented. That kind of decontextualization is the first step to full-blown revisionism.

Tips on Arguing: Naturalistic Fallacy

Image by Brandon T. Bisceglia

“Whether it’s motivation or some invigoration that you’re looking for, Cell-nique assists in detoxifying and alkalizing your body naturally to enhance your spirit and drive.”

That’s one of many claims made by a “super green drink” manufacturer headquartered in Weston, CT. It’s the kind of claim that we hear more and more these days: “natural cures” are offered in place of scientifically-backed medicines. Foods tout the fact that they contain no preservatives or artificial flavors. Even some cleaning products distinguish themselves as being made from “natural chemicals.”

All of these advertising schemes play on the assumption that because something is natural, it must be better somehow.

But does nature always offer the best solution? Probably not.

First, it helps to realize that the word “natural” simply means “not man made.” If a human modifies it, it becomes artificial.

With that definition in mind, imagine that you want to cross a deep river. You have two options: you can hang on to a piece of driftwood floating near the riverbank, or you can build a raft.

The driftwood might get you to the other side, and it’s definitely natural. But your chances of making it are much, much better with the artificially-made raft.

All-natural clearly isn’t always the most effective or useful policy. Making tools to overcome the limitations of what the natural world can offer is one of humankind’s greatest assets. No one would advocate for going back to all-natural knives (rocks), or all-natural toothbrushes (fingernails).

Nor does all-natural mean healthy. Just consider the fact that cyanide and uranium are both naturally occurring substances. Yet one is a deadly poison and the other is highly radioactive.

Even the claim that some food producers make about using all-natural ingredients is hard to back up. Agriculture is a man-made invention that has literally changed every crop into something different from its wild counterpart through selective breeding over the thousands of years that we’ve been farming. Unless the manufacturers plucked their ingredients from a forest, they too are engaging in an “artificial” process to make their products.

So what does it mean if a product is advertised as natural? Most of the time, absolutely nothing. It’s just another gimmick to hook consumers into paying an extra buck.

New Magazine Fails on Freemason Conspiracies (an open letter)

An antique door knocker at the Mumford River Masonic Lodge in Douglas, Mass.
Photo by Svadilfari. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.

To the editors of Ideas & Discoveries:

I recently purchased your pilot issue (February 2011), and saw the page on which you asked to hear your readers' "likes and dislikes" of the new magazine. I visited your website, and filled out the survey available there.

But I felt that more needs to be said, especially after reading the dubiously under-sourced feature article titled, "Freemasons: History's Secret World Government."

The article suffers from a litany of serious shortcomings in journalistic standards and basic due diligence that utterly undermine the entire piece's credibility.

Three problems in particular caught my attention:

1. The author is not listed, nor is any information given about her/him. It's not just a point of pride for a writer to have her or his moniker under a headline; it's also a vital reference for the reader. This article is ostensibly about history. Is the author an expert historian in this field - or a historian at all? Is she or he a vetted journalist who covers this field? There's no way to tell.

The reader's lack of knowledge about who wrote the article becomes even more pertinent given the next shortcoming, which is that:

2. The article contains few cited sources or quotes. A journalist is supposed to make the sources - primary documents and interviews - the backbone of the story. Source citation is the basis of a story's credibility. It tells the reader, "Hey, I didn't just make all this stuff up. Here's where I got it from, so you can check for yourself."

Vague references to unnamed "journalists" or "researchers" is only allowable if a fact is tangential to the article's focus. But the "Freemasons" article uses these kinds of unidentified sources to posit central arguments, such as when it points out that "more reports are being published" about the devious plans of secret societies. No examples of these reports are given; no quotes, and no mention of whether any of them are reliable.

More often, "facts" are simply presented without any reference to a source whatsoever. According to the article, 33% of the rebels who fought in the American Revolution were Freemasons. But where did this statistic come from? Certainly not the Census Bureau.

In another section the author writes, "Investigations reveal that many of [Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi's policies correspond to the secret society's objectives." No hint is given about what the objectives were, how they were discovered, how they relate to any policies, or even who conducted the supposed "investigations."

The only person quoted directly in the entire article is Jim Marrs, who is variously identified as an "expert on secret societies" and a "researcher." A simple Google Scholar search reveals not one piece of recognized academic writing under his name. Marrs is, in fact, an ex-journalist who now espouses belief in a whole host of conspiracies, from alien abductions to 9/11 denial.

The author’s B.S. detector must not be very sensitive if he or she considers Marrs to be engaged in legitimate research. But that wouldn’t be quite as bad if not for the third shortcoming, which is that:

3. Although the article makes highly controversial claims, it offers practically no dissenting views.

The author’s wording of the article makes it obvious that his or her opinion is that the Freemasons exert a great deal of power and influence (perhaps in a negative fashion) on society. At one point, for instance, the article states (without citing a source) that “Besides Washington, there have been at least 11 U.S. presidents who belonged either to a Masonic Lodge or an affiliated organization.”

If 12 presidents were Freemasons, then 31 were not (43 men have been president: Grover Cleveland is typically counted twice, which is why Barrack Obama is president number 44). A sizeable majority therefore were not initiates.

In a similar fashion, the author mentions that “nine of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence...are openly members of Masonic Lodges, and another five have close ties to a lodge.” If, as the article says, Freemasons really did constitute one third of the rebels at the time of the Revolutionary War, then they made a terrible showing at the signing. Out of 56, they would have represented less than one sixth of the signers - and still only one quarter if you count outside “ties.”

Marr’s statements about cover-ups and the New World Order go unopposed, without the slightest attempt at a counterargument. The author doesn’t even bother at any point to bring in a token skeptic or to propose another perspective. Fringe conspiracy theories are portrayed as commonly accepted knowledge - and all this without a trace of reference.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I haven’t addressed the veracity of the article, despite the fact that practically every paragraph makes unsubstantiated claims that arouse my suspicions.

To be frank, I don’t recall the last time I saw such sloppy journalism printed on such glossy paper. After reading this one article, I decided not to read any of the others. If the standards are as low as they seem, I don’t feel I can trust any of the content.

My likes are easy to enumerate. I like the concept of Ideas & Discoveries; judging by the design and content, it appears to be intended for a similar audience as "academic" magazines, such as Scientific American and National Geographic (I base this assessment in part on several of the survey's questions, in which the magazine is grouped with these and other popular science periodicals).

I wish there were more publications that provided education on a range of academic subjects that was accessible to general audiences. Your magazine could be among them, too, if it adopted some of the normal practices for maintaining journalistic integrity and accountability.

Until you tighten your editorial guidelines, however, I wouldn’t expect to reach anywhere near that level of credibility. Right now, a place on the rack closer to Weekly World News or the National Enquirer seems more appropriate.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
- Brandon T. Bisceglia.

Continuum 32: The (Mostly) Science Show

Visiting the CDC / Climate Denial / Culture and Scientific Consensus / Psychic Kids

Students from HCC’s Honors Program stand next to an iron lung during their recent visit to the CDC in Atlanta. Image courtesy of Caysey Welton.

Interview: Visiting the CDC – Every year, HCC offers a special interdisciplinary course for students enrolled in the college’s Honors Program. The topics covered by the seminar change from year to year.

This semester, Professor of Biology Dr. Kathleen Toedt is covering epidemiology – the study of diseases and how they spread.

In mid-November, the students in the class flew to Atlanta, Ga. to visit the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), where they toured the agency’s on-premises museum.

Climate Denial – Dr. Michael Mann is a professor of meteorology and the director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. Mann is also the person responsible for the famous “hockey-stick graph” that has become a major target of climate change critics over the past decade.

At the annual conference of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing in New Haven earlier this November, Mann discussed the solidity of climate science and some of the genuine scientific uncertainties that remain.

He contrasts this with the misguided public discourse surrounding the hockey-stick graph and, more recently, with the manufacture of the Climategate controversy in 2009.

Climate Science From Climate Scientists: http://www.realclimate.org/

Culture and Scientific Consensus – Why do people with certain political and social values tend toward a particular set of seemingly unrelated beliefs about what the scientific consensus is on certain issues, while people with a different set of values think the consensus agrees with their perspective?

Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He and his colleagues have looked into something they call “cultural cognition of risk.” What they’ve found is that a person’s cultural values play an important role in determining their assessment of risk, of what scientific consensus is, and even in whether someone is likely to believe an expert’s opinion.

The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School: http://www.culturalcognition.net/

Commentary: Psychic Kids – A&E began airing the second season of a show called Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal this November. On the show, children with emotional and psychological problems are given “help” by psychics and mediums, all while being taped to sell to audiences.

Most of the supposed “experts” on the show have little professional experience working with troubled children, and all of them are invested in entrenching the kids that they really are being visited by ghosts or possess psychic powers.

This show demonstrates the harm of unscientific thinking, and takes advantage of the misery of children for a profit.

Skepchick’s letter-writing campaign to end Psychic Kids: http://skepchick.org/blog/2010/11/psychic-kids-letter-writing-campaign-edition/

News – HCC’s Ex-President Dies, World AIDS Day, Metropolitan Museum of Art Trip, Winter Wonderland Ball



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Continuum 31

Visit the Continuum web page

Executive Positions / Canvassing / Guilty of Date Rape? / Bridgeport's Beloved Socialist

Jaclyn Willis, played by Shamorrow Bember, tells the court the story of the night she was allegedly raped.
Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia

Student Senate Updates: Executive Positions/Canvassing - For most of the semester, the Student Senate has operated without most of its executive positions. That finally changed on Nov. 4, when Treasurer Konrad Mazurek became acting President and senator Juleen Moreno was voted as acting Secretary.

The Student Senate also decided to hold a special meeting the following Thursday in response to concerns that the Community Action Network (CAN) had possibly violated certain rules and policies during a demonstration the club held on Oct. 27 to promote Democratic Congressional candidate Jim Himes when he and his opponent, Republican Dan Debicella, were at the college for a debate.

Interview: No Witness - On Nov. 3, HCC's Women's Center and the Performing Arts club cosponsored a production of No Witness, a play that explores the complexities of date rape. Twelve audience members are selected as jurors to render a verdict in the fictional court battle over whether a young man overstepped the line.

This Week in History: Bridgeport's Beloved Socialist - Jasper McLevy was mayor of Bridgeport for 24 years, from 1933 to 1957. He was also a prominent member of the Socialist Party. He was a closer friend to Republicans than Democrats, and was eventually criticized for being too fiscally conservative in city affairs.

McLevy's relationship with the city was deeply intertwined with his sometimes battered identity as a lifelong Socialist. Bridgeport also changed dramatically under his stewardship.

News – Jewish Culture, Frosty the Snowman, Mr. HCC, Musical Talent Show, Toys for Tots, Music Lessons



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Continuum 30: Student Senate / STATWAY / Extracurricular Activities / Yale School of Medicine

Visit the Continuum web page

Graphic courtesy of actiononaccess.org.

News – FOE Meeting Times, Gettysburg Trip, Ernest Newton, NYC Trip, Music Lessons

Student Senate Updates: The Student Senate continued a painfully slow growth process at its Oct. 21 meeting, inducting its fifth member, Business major Melissa Silver.

The Student Senate also took votes on allocating funds for clubs who had not supplied a budget proposal before the Spring semester deadline. Proposal deadlines had been reopened until Oct. 14.

Most clubs got what they asked for without too much question. The Photography Club, however, was flat-funded $2,000 after several items on their proposal were rejected. The club had been asking for nearly $5,000, nearly twice what any other club had received.

The Art Club was left in the same position, though their initial request was slightly lower.

The clubs may still receive the rest of the funding that they requested. Part of the reason that the Student Senate voted for flat-funding was that the budget proposals were, in Mazurek’s words, “messy.”

Interview: STATWAY – HCC’s Math Department has begun test-piloting a new program for developmental math students that shifts the focus of their studies from algebra to statistics. The program is called STATWAY, and was formulated by the Carnegie Foundation. If all goes well, the college will begin teaching the new program in 2011. The goal then will be to change the way that developmental math is taught in community colleges across the country.

Host Brandon T. Bisceglia speaks about the program with Mathematics Professor Theodora Benezra, who is heading up the research and development team at HCC.

Commentary: Extracurricular Activities – Ever since Beacon Hall opened in 2008, HCC’s enrollment has been increasing. Along with that expansion has come an added demand for more extracurricular events and activities.

Several groups have excelled at meeting this demand. They deserve a bit of praise for that success.

This Week in History: Yale School of Medicine – In November of 1813, the Medical Institute of Yale College opened its doors, making it the first school in Connecticut for the formal training of physicians. The Institute, which would blossom into the now-famous Yale School of Medicine, was the product of a unique agreement between the college and the State.

Medicine at Yale, presented by the Harvey Cushing/John Jay Whitney Medical Library




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