The Consequence of Matters

On this day in 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. The territory had been controlled by the French through most of the 18th century and they had established the port of New Orleans and a few trading posts up the Mississippi. It became a pawn on the chessboard of European politics in 1762 when France ceded it to Spain in the secret Treaty of Fontainbleu as part of France's maneuvering during the Seven Years War. That was effectively a world war between Britain and its allies vs. France and its allies and spanning five continents. This war in turn exploded out of a colonial war waged between Britain and France for colonial expansion in the late 1750's. The French and Indian War in the Americas was part of that conflict and gave a young George Washington some military experience. The Seven Years War was touched off when Prussia, believing that war in Europe between Britain and France was inevitable, preemptively invaded Saxony and recapture...

Today is the birthday of writer, philosopher, and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, born in London in 1759. Her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the earliest books of feminist philosophy; in it, she argues that it is lack of access to education, not any inherent flaw, that makes women seem inferior to men. She argued that women should be taught to be rational, rather than ornamental, beings and that they should be given skills to help them  support themselves in widowhood so that they need never marry out of financial necessity. Her own education was haphazard, because her father had squandered his inheritance and was trying — and failing — to earn a living as a gentleman farmer. The family moved around a lot, and though her brother Ned received a formal education, Mary did not. She's less well known, but no less influential, as a travel writer. Her book Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) combi...

So all the “fake news” was true. A hostile foreign power intervened in the presidential election, hoping to install Donald Trump in the White House. The Trump campaign was aware of this intervention and welcomed it. And once in power, Trump tried to block any inquiry into what happened. Never mind attempts to spin this story as somehow not meeting some definitions of collusion or obstruction of justice. The fact is that the occupant of the White House betrayed his country. An d the question everyone is asking is, what will Democrats do about it? But notice that the question is only about Democrats. Everyone (correctly) takes it as a given that Republicans will do nothing. Why? Because the modern G.O.P. is perfectly willing to sell out America if that’s what it takes to get tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans may not think of it in those terms, but that’s what their behavior amounts to. The truth is that the G.O.P. faced its decisive test in 2016, when almost everyone in t...

Today is traditionally held to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, who was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, so he would have been born just a day or two earlier. He left behind no personal papers; so much of what we know, or think we know, about him comes to us from public and court documents, with a fair measure of inference and speculation. We do know that his father John was a glove maker and alderman, and his mother, Mary Arden, was a landed heiress. William's extensive knowledge of Latin and Greek likely came from his education at the well-respected local grammar school. That was the extent of his formal education, which has led to hundreds of years of conspiracy theories disputing the authorship of his plays, since many found it unbelievable that he could have written so knowledgeably about history, politics, royalty, and foreign lands on a grammar school education. Various figures, such as Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, the...

Finally, And it's the birthday of the man who once wrote, "Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea," novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding, born to the gentry in Somerset, England, in 1707. He began his career writing for the stage, but often found himself in hot water because his plays were invariably political satires, which the government didn't take kindly to. In 1737, probably in response to Fielding's plays, Parliament passed the Theatrical Licensing Act, which  required plays to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain; Fielding, knowing that none of his plays were likely to gain approval, retired from the stage and became a novelist. He's best known for The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), which recounts the adventures of a lusty but good-hearted young man who falls in love with his neighbor's daughter. On its surface a comic romance, Tom Jones also contains a fair measure of social commentary on the English class system. Fielding...

Next thing on the history list is the birthday of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. He was born in Königsberg, Prussia, in 1724. His father was a saddle maker. He studied theology, physics, mathematics, and philosophy, and worked for a time as a private tutor. He made very little money at tutoring, but it gave him plenty of time for thinking. He lectured at the University of Königsberg for 15 years, until he was eventually given a tenured position as professor of logic  and metaphysics in 1770. Though he enjoyed hearing travel stories, he never ventured more than 50 miles from his hometown, believing that travel was not necessary to solve the problems of philosophy. In his most influential work, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he argued against Empiricism (exemplified by John Locke and David Hume), which held that the mind was a blank slate to be filled with observations of the physical world, and Rationalism (best exemplified by Rene Descarte, Gottfried Leibniz ...

Today is a busy day in history. Let's start with Earth Day. It was first observed in 1970, but its roots go back to the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's landmark book Silent Spring, exposing the effects of pesticides and other chemical pollution on the environment, and specifically the effect of DDT on causing the egg shells of bird to become too thin and break before the chicks hatched. Troubled by the lack of attention pollution was receiving on the national stage, Wis consin senator Gaylord Nelson began going on speaking tours, trying to educate people and politicians about environmental issues. And while the public was concerned, the politicians didn't pay much attention. During the late 1960s, Senator Nelson had the idea to harness the energy and methods of the student protests against the Vietnam War to organize a grassroots conservation movement. At a press conference in 1969, he announced plans for a nationwide demonstration, to take place the following spr...

It's the birthday of Clifton Keith Hillegass, born in the small town of Rising City, Nebraska in 1918. He is more widely known as the progenitor of that savior of undergraduates everywhere, CliffsNotes. He got a job with a textbook company. He left briefly to serve in the Air Corps during WWII, and he came back to his old job, but with new job duties, including traveling around the country buying and selling used textbooks. He was in Toronto for work when he met Jack Cole, a  publisher and bookstore owner who published condensed versions of 16 Shakespeare plays, which he called "Cole's Notes." Cole suggested that Hillegass publish his outlines in America. So Hillegass agreed to pay Cole a royalty, and he changed the name to Cliff's Notes (the company eventually dropped the apostrophe in "Cliff's"). He borrowed $4,000 and convinced a friend at a printing house in Lincoln to print 33,000 copies. He designed the black and yellow cover, and he distrib...

It was on this day in 1787 that the first American play opened, at the John Street Theater in New York City. It was written by 29-year-old Royall Tyler. Tyler went to Harvard, studied law, and joined the Continental Army. He was appointed the aide to General Benjamin Lincoln to help suppress Shay's Rebellion. After Shay left Massachusetts for New York, Tyler was sent to New York City to negotiate for Shay's capture. And there Tyler did something that he had never done: went t o see a play. Theater was slow to take off in America. There are known performances of Shakespeare in Williamsburg in the early 1700s, and in general the Southern colonies — more open to all British customs — were happier to embrace the theater. In the North, it was looked on as a sinful form of entertainment. My, how times have changed. Massachusetts passed a law in 1750 that outlawed theater performances, and by 1760 there were similar laws in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, although p...

Apple stole patented technology from Qualcomm (recall in the Apple/Samsung lawsuit, they claimed to always do their own homework). Apple did this because they didn't want to be reliant on a single source for modems for future iPhones. That makes it hard to gouge your supplier. Apple transferred this information to Intel, encouraging it to develop a modem of their own and offering the iPhone market to pay for the development costs. Qualcomm sued Apple in global venues for $1 b illion. Apple lost in Germany and China, and things are not looking good in the UK. In addition, Intel was reportedly experiencing delays getting their modems ready in time for inclusion in this fall's iPhones. So today, in the middle of the trial, Apple settled the Qualcomm suit for an undisclosed amount and agreed to pay what Qualcomm demanded for its technology. Given the circumstances, I'll bet a doughnut that the amount Apple paid was a lot closer to $1 billion than it was to $0

On this day in 1987, the longest running prime time sitcom in TV history debuted. The Simpsons began as a video short on The Tracy Ullman Show. Two years later it was spun off on its own and has now aired more than 650 episodes. It has received numerous awards. The Simpson family has their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Matt Groening has said that his goal in creating The Simpsons was to offer audiences an alternative to the "mainstream trash" they were watching. And while the show often tackles heavy-hitting topics like religion, climate change, poverty, gun control, and nuclear power, its silly jokes and occasionally coarse humor have put some people off. In the early '90s, President George H.W. Bush encouraged Americans to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. First Lady Barbara Bush called The Simpsons "the dumbest thing she had ever seen." But to be like Simpsons may not be so bad after all. The characters embrace and reflect...

This day in fucking irritating journalism. The NY Times reports on Lebron James' school: "Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent." OH MY FUCKING GOD! This is a STELLAR example of how to lie with statistics. Let's convert both numbers into the same measure. You could say that Nataylia missed 50 days of school last year and is on track to miss 36 days this year. Or you could say her attendance rate has gone from 72 percent last year to 80 percent so far this year. The problem is that both of those constructions make it pretty obvious that (a) Nataylia is still missing a lot of school, and (b) her attendance rate is only a little better than last year. So her attendance was fudged to make it hard to figure that out. This is journalistic malpractice. If you read carefully between the lines of the Tim...

It's the birthday of novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder , born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1897. He won his first Pulitzer Prize when he was 30 years old for his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927). In 1934, he went to a lecture by Gertrude Stein in Chicago, and he was fascinated by her. She was 60 years old and he was in his 30s, but they were both dealing with sudden success — he from Bridge of San Luis Rey and his Pulitzer, she from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. He invited her to stay in his Chicago apartment during speaking tours, and despite their difference in age and writing styles, they became good friends and corresponded for the rest of Stein's life. It was The Making of Americans (1925) — Stein's difficult, experimental, 900-page novel — that inspired Wilder's most famous play, Our Town (1938). Like The Making of Americans, it traces the intertwining lives of two families, and Wilder used his own version of modernism — the set was mi...

The Beltline park is one of the most innovative plans in city development history, repurposing existing, abandoned, railroad rights of way to create a big circular walk that encloses the downtown area. In our neighborhood a few year ago, Fuqua Development planned to build a strip mall right up against our segment of the Beltline. This drew over 600 people to the zoning board meeting, by far the largest number that have ever attended one of those. Fuqua's plans violated the cl ear text of the Beltline Zoning Overlay law, which requires that Beltline zoning laws, prohibiting big box development, take precedence over all underlying zoning laws. The zoning board decided that the plain text of the Overlay was not a regulation. It was "aspirational," and they approved Fuckwa's plans. Having succeeded in steering the corrupt city planning department in his desired direction, Fuckwa is now building another big box strip mall directly across the street. Our part of t...