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If you are in the stands behind home plate, you are actually 6 feet closer to the batter than the pitcher is.
Great ballpark!
Be sure to visit the Boston Globe's slideshow of pictures of iconic moments from the past century. Oddly, no pictures of Bucky F. Dent or Bill Buckner.
And this afternoon, the Red Soz play the Yankess in 1912 garb. How awesome.
Here are a bunch of people on Twitter who didn't real the Titanic sinking is historical truth:
A boy plays aboard the deck of the Titanic
A Queenstown vendor sells irish lace aboard the Titanic
A U.S. doctor inspects passenger's eyes
Major Frank Brown
Members of the Titanic crew pose with lifejackets
Passengers from steerage settle on deck aboard the Titanic
The bedroom in the Browne suite aboard the Titanic
The gymnasium
Waiting for job possibly transferring mail
The last photo of the Titanic taken by Father Francis Browne
…
Source: Father Browne’s Titanic Album via BuzzFeed
One hundredth anniversary approaches and National Geographic has a nice story and pictures of what the sunken vessel looks like today, including never-before-seen photo composites of the ship as a whole.. like this look at the bow:
I particularly liked this shot of the Turkish bath (as it is today, and as it was then):
This...
Then that evening, this...
Which lead to this...
On April 12th, 1861, 150 years ago today, the first battle of the US Civil War was fought at Ft. Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina. Southern states had been seceding from the union for months, but the US still maintained coastal forts.
During the four months leading up to Lincoln’s Inauguration, the seceding states, one after another, seized federal forts, arsenals, and customs houses within their borders.
There was little to oppose the breakaway forces, a caretaker and a guard or two comprising many of the garrisons. Most of the 16,000 or so regular Army soldiers had been posted to the western frontier to protect settlers against the perceived threat from American Indians.
On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was inaugurated, promising the seceding states that he would use force only “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places” belonging to the federal government.
The stage was set for the inevitable showdown.
National Geographic takes a look back with a rundown of what actually happened on April 12th at Ft. Sumter, and how those actions sent the nation into four years of war and cost more than 600,000 men their lives. Link
Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, March 25, 1911, New York, New York.
Good source material at Cornell's site.
Important because it changed the way New York, and then the rest of the country, viewed labor. Ushered in a whole slew of laws relating to fire safety measures and conditions in factories.
146 died:
Geraldine Doyle, 86, who as a 17-year-old factory worker became the inspiration for a popular World War II recruitment poster that evoked female power and independence under the slogan "We Can Do It!," died Dec. 26 at a hospice in Lansing, Mich.
Her daughter, Stephanie Gregg, said the cause of death was complications from severe arthritis.
For millions of Americans throughout the decades since World War II, the stunning brunette in the red and white polka-dot bandanna was Rosie the Riveter.
Rosie's rolled-up sleeves and flexed right arm came to represent the newfound strength of the 18 million women who worked during the war and later made her a figure of the feminist movement.
But the woman in the patriotic poster was never named Rosie, nor was she a riveter. All along it was Mrs. Doyle, who after graduating from high school in Ann Arbor, Mich., took a job at a metal factory, her family said.
One day, a photographer representing United Press International came to her factory and captured Mrs. Doyle leaning over a piece of machinery and wearing a red and white polka-dot bandanna over her hair.
In early 1942, the Westinghouse Corp. commissioned artist J. Howard Miller to produce several morale-boosting posters to be displayed inside its buildings. The project was funded by the government as a way to motivate workers and perhaps recruit new ones for the war effort.
Smitten with the UPI photo, Miller reportedly was said to have decided to base one of his posters on the anonymous, slender metal worker - Mrs. Doyle.
For four decades, this fact escaped Mrs. Doyle, who shortly after the photo was taken left her job at the factory. She barely lasted two weeks.
A cellist, Mrs. Doyle was horrified to learn that a previous worker at the factory had badly injured her hands working at the machines. She found safer employment at a soda fountain and bookshop in Ann Arbor, where she wooed a young dental school student and later became his wife.
DECEMBER 8, 1980
Took them a while, but Germany has finally finished paying off reparations for that nasty bit of business almost a century ago.
Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.
The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks (about 750 billion US dollars), a sum later reduced to 132 billion (about 400 billion US), £22 billion (roughly 37.5 billion US dollars) at the time.
The bill would have been settled much earlier had it not been for the Great Depression in the 1920's. And then this guy Adolf Hitler reneged on reparations during his reign.
The final payment of £59.5 million (80.8 million) will be made October 3.
NOW DON'T DO IT AGAIN!
The granddaughter of an officer aboard the ill-fated Titanic reveals that the ship's helmsman turned the vessel toward the iceberg instead of away because of a confusion over steering orders that applied differently to steam ship and sailing ships.
Novelist Louise Patten, granddaughter of Titanic's Second Officer Charles Lightoller, says orders that applied to one steering system meant the exact opposite on the other type of vessel.
The command to turn "hard a-starboard," for example, meant to turn the wheel right under one system and left under the other, she writes in her new novel Good as Gold, the BBC reports.
The helmsman aboard the Titanic's 1912 maiden voyage that night was used to the archaic Tiller Orders system, she says, and responded to his orders by turning into the iceberg instead of away.
Some 1,500 people died in the tragedy.
She says her grandfather took part in a dramatic final meeting of the four senior officers in which he learned of the fatal mistake, but that it was withheld deliberately even from an official inquiry.
"It was made clear to him by those at the top that, if the company were found to be negligent, it would be bankrupted and every job would be lost," Patten says.
He only told one person, her grandmother, who eventually shared the family secret with Patten.
I suppose it is possible, although one must keep in mind that the person bringing this to light is a novelist who is plugging her new book.
Secondly, it seems unlikely that someone who survived the sinking would not have recalled that the ship went port, rather than starboard, especially if the turn was a "hard" one.
But mainly, I doubt the allegation because... well, the novelist is plaing wrong. Let me give a bit of background and explanation.
There's already a bit of confusion about the "hard o'starboard" call. "Starboard" means "right" and (if any of you recall The Titanic movie), the ship needed to go left (or port) to avoid the berg. So many have claimed that the movie was historically inaccurate.
But the "hard o'starboard" call of the movie (and real life) was the accurate call. It's because in the old days, ships -- including the Titanic -- operated under what is known as the Tiller Order system. Think of the tiller on a small boat: in order to turn the boat to port, you move the tiller to starboard. And vice versa.
On ships back then, the command is "helm hard to starboard" (the "helm" being the actual steering mechanism) which has the result of turning the ship port (to the left). That was the order given in both the movie and real life.
The novelist here is claiming that Titanic helmsman "was used to the archaic" Tiller Order system. But as I've said, the Titanic -- indeed all ships at the time -- used the Tiller Order system. The convention wasn't changed until the 1930's -- nearly two decades after the Titanic sinking.
UPDATE: The Guardian gives a contradictory story. It says that the helmsman was used to the (then) new steering system -- known as the Rudder System (which mean you turn the wheel starboard to go starboard), not the Tiller System (as claimed by the USA Today story above):
The man at the wheel, Quartermaster Robert Hitchins, was trained under rudder orders – but tiller orders were still in use in the north Atlantic. So when First Officer William Murdoch first spotted the iceberg and gave a 'hard a-starboard' order, a panicked Hitchins turned the liner into the course of the iceberg.
"The real reason why Titanic hit the iceberg is because he turned the wheel the wrong way," said Patten. By the time the error had been corrected, two minutes had been lost. Nothing could stop the iceberg breaching the hull.
That at least makes more sense.
But I still doubt the story, and the Guardian errs caution as well:
There is a caveat to the revelations. Patten, the wife of former Tory education secretary Lord (John) Patten and a woman well known in the City, whose CV includes non-executive board membership at Marks & Spencer, is making them known because they are a part of the storyline of her novel out next week.
Pictured below -- what's left of the Titanic's steering wheel. It ain't tellin'.
The haunting photos by artist and photographer Sergey Larenkov are current photos overlaid with vintage photos from World War II. Very beautiful stuff here and here
Every eight years, a couple hundred president scholars are asked to rank the presidents on various scales, including communication, honesty, intelligence, foreign policy achievements, economic achievements, etc.
The 2010 assessment is out -- you can read the PDF here -- but the "headline" results are:
Here's the top ten's over the life of the survey:
...and the 2010 top two and the bottom two for each category:
Clinton, for what it's worth, ranked 13th this year -- one ahead of "Bloody Bloody" (Andrew Jackson) and two ahead of Obama.
I saw a lot of Rand Paul on TV yesterday. And heard him on the radio. The newly-minted Republican candidate for Senator from Kentucky is facing national criticism because of his stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Rand Paul, I honestly believe, is not a racist. He just believes that government should not be involved in business. And he holds to that ideological stand scrupulously.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited government from discriminating on the basis of race -- in schools and bus stations and government jobs. Paul has no problem with that. But the part he has a problem with is where the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires businesses not to discriminate either. While Paul thinks it is stupid and immoral for a business to discriminate, he doesn't think the government has a place in preventing them from doing so. Or, as Ezra Klein writes:
So I take Paul at his word that he's not a racist. What he is, however, is an ideological extremist. He is so categorically opposed to public regulation of private enterprise that he cannot even bring himself to say that the Woolworth lunch counter should've been desegregated. Instead, he falls back on the remedies of the market: "I wouldn't attend, wouldn't support, wouldn't go to," a private institution that discriminates, he told Rachel Maddow. But he would let them discriminate. And in the segregated South, that would've been a perfectly viable business model for many, many very important institutions.
This prompted Rachel Maddow to ask Rand Paul a very simple question on her broadcast last night if the lunch counters at Woolworth's should have been desegregated, "yes or no". Paul's answer was evasive (he knew it was a trap question), but his answer was essentially "no":
"Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion."
Rachel replied:
"Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul."
[The whole interview was fascinating. Clip below]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Now, I stress again, Paul is not a racist in my view. But his government-get-your-hands-off-business logic certainly encourages racism, and no doubt his views attract racists to his camp.
But Paul's logic is not only offensive to racial minorities, it ought to be offensive to just about everybody. Just think of the laws that regulate business -- disabilities laws which require ramps, child labor laws, etc. If Paul took his logic to its natural conclusion, we would be transported back to the turn of the century -- the 18th century.
What is at odds here is the very notion of what government should be doing. Paul thinks it should get out of the way. That's a reasonable position. Businesses should be free to do what they want.
But within limits. One person's freedom ceases when it impinges on another's. And there are times -- and the civil rights era certainly serves as a good example -- where government needs to intercede to ensure equal rights for all. Government needs to be a force for good, where evil is pervasive. No, it can't eradicate evil from the hearts of man, but it certainly can make man behave properly. But this just highlights what a strange philosophy libertarianism is. While libertarians claim to be driven by a goal of maximizing freedom, what they mean by "freedom" is not what most people take that word to mean. To a libertarian, the only freedom that really matters is freedom from government intrusion. But often, meaningful freedom can only be created through government intervention.
A very good point from Atrios:
Government regulates – and, of course, provides the necessary conditions for the existence of – private business in all kinds of ways. So when people have a particular concern about, say, the Civil Rights Act, as opposed to, say, parking requirements, it’s reasonable to wonder why.
Anyway, it's anybody's guess as to whether Paul's worldview will become a major force. in the meantime, I also suppose it's time to start asking Republican leaders across the country a straightforward question: "Your party's Senate candidate in Kentucky has a problem with the Civil Rights Act. Do you think he's right or wrong?"
UPDATE: Someone else asks the same question as me--
If we follow the logic he's already articulated, Paul must necessarily oppose the minimum wage, for example. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, in light of their burdens on private companies, would be equally problematic. Social Security must be out of the question. Child-labor laws would obviously be a problem, as would workplace safety regulations and OSHA.
We can even start exploring more details on discrimination. Paul talked about segregated lunch counters yesterday, but let's also explore employment discrimination. If a private company decided to fire a woman for getting pregnant, Rand Paul would necessarily conclude that it's not the government's business. If a private employer refused to hire Jewish applicants, that, under Paul's worldview, would be legally permissible, too.
Rand Paul will spend the next six months trying to defend his philosophical worldview. It should be interesting to watch.
MORE -- Even Bruce Bartlett, very much the free marketer himself, gets it:
In 1883 the Supreme Court, then in its most libertarian phase, knocked down the 1875 [Civil Rights] act as well as many other Republican measures passed during Reconstruction designed to aid African Americans. The Court's philosophy in these cases led logically to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which essentially gave constitutional protection to legal segregation enforced by state and local governments throughout the U.S.
....The libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. The gains made by the former slaves in the years after the Civil War were completely reversed once the Supreme Court effectively prevented the federal government from protecting them. Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn't work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.
....Rand's position is that [the Civil Rights Act] was wrong in principle in 1964. There is no other way of interpreting this except as an endorsement of all the things the Civil Rights Act was designed to prohibit, as favoring the status quo throughout the South that would have led to a continuation of segregation and discrimination against African Americans at least for many more years. Undoubtedly, changing mores would have broken down some of this over time, but there is no reason to believe that it would have been quick or that vestiges wouldn't still remain today. Indeed, vestiges remain despite the Civil Rights Act.
National Geographic looks at Manhattan when it was discovered by Henry Hudson (in 1609) compared to today:
Times Square:
Just last week, I noted the 40th anniversary of the Kent State killings, so it's strange that I am back writing about it again, so soon.
But this is kind of big.
There's much that we all know about Kent State. Students protesting Vietnam. National Guard presence on the campus. The retreat of the National Guard to the top of a hill. Then the sudden turn by the Guard and the opening up of gunfire on the students. 67 shots. Four dead in Ohio.
One question that remained somewhat a mystery over the years was whether the National Guard was ordered to fire, or whether (as they were later to claim at trial), they were responding to rocks or even gunfire directed at them.
Many pictures of the day exist, and they suggest that the National Guard was not acting in self-defense. (Also, many of the killed and wounded were more than a hundred feet away, which tends to suggest that the firing was not in response to an imposing threat).
But nothing conclusive.
Now, there is new evidence that all but ends the controversy. An audio recording of the shootings has been put through some modern-day technical analysis:
The Ohio National Guardsmen who fired on students and antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 were given an order to prepare to shoot, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audio tape of the event.
"Guard!" says a male voice on the recording, which two forensic audio experts enhanced and evaluated at the request of The Plain Dealer. Several seconds pass. Then, "All right, prepare to fire!"
"Get down!" someone shouts urgently, presumably in the crowd. Finally, "Guard! . . . " followed two seconds later by a long, booming volley of gunshots. The entire spoken sequence lasts 17 seconds.
The previously undetected command could begin to explain the central mystery of the Kent State tragedy - why 28 Guardsmen pivoted in unison atop Blanket Hill, raised their rifles and pistols and fired 67 times, killing four students and wounding nine others in an act that galvanized sentiment against the Vietnam War.
The order indicates that the gunshots were not spontaneous, or in response to sniper fire, as some have suggested over the years.
"I think this is a major development," said Alan Canfora, one of the wounded, who located a copy of the tape in a library archive in 2007 and has urged that it be professionally reviewed. "There's been a grave injustice for 40 years because we lacked sufficient evidence to prove what we've known all along - that the Ohio National Guard was commanded to kill at Kent State on May 4, 1970."
***
The original 30-minute reel-to-reel tape was made by Terry Strubbe, a Kent State communications student in 1970 who turned on his recorder and put its microphone in his dorm window overlooking the campus Commons, hoping to document the protest unfolding below.
It is the only known recording to capture the events leading up to the shootings - including a tinny bullhorn announcement that students must leave "for your own safety," the pop of tear gas canisters and the wracking coughs of people in their path, the raucous protest chants, the drone of helicopters overhead, and the near-constant chiming of the campus victory bell to rally the demonstrators.
The enhancement of the audiotape is, of course, good news to the students who were there, and confirms what they have been saying for forty years:
"How do you spell bombshell?" said Barry Levine, whose girlfriend Allison Krause was mortally wounded as he tried to pull her behind cover. "That is obviously very significant. The photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts of what took place seemed to suggest everything happened in those last seconds in a coordinated way. This would be the icing on the cake, so to speak."
You can hear the recording here.
Pictured below: National Guard units approach the pagoda at the top of the hill. Allison Krause (who died that day) can be seen holding hands with Alan Canfora (mentioned in the article above) underneath the pagoda. The National Guard would go over the hill and down on a football practice field on the other side. Then they would return back to the hill, stopping at the pagoda, turn suddenly, and fire upon the students (see map below).
Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
Wounded (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
The following is a re-post from a post I posted last year, which focussed on Mary Ann Vecchio, the girl in the iconic photo below. For other things Kent State-related, you might want to view this interview with Devo (yes, the two founding members of Devo were present at the shootings), or better still, a recent editorial by Elaine Holstein, mother of Jeffrey Miller (the victim in the photo below), entitled "What I Lost At Kent State".
39 40 years ago today, the Ohio National Guard shot at protesting students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine.
It was in that immediate aftermath when Akron Beacon Journal photographer James Filo snapped this (in)famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photo:
The anguished young woman is Mary Ann Vecchio, who was (at the time) a 14 year old runaway. She is shown kneeling over the body of Kent State student Jeffrey Miller, who was fatally shot moments earlier. Vecchio did not know Miller, although she had befriended two of the other students who were hit by gunfire that day: Sandra Scheuer, who was killed; and Alan Canfora, who was wounded.
Back in 1995, Vecchio spoke at a press conference about the impact of that day on her life:
"I couldn't believe that people would kill people over what they thought, just because he demonstrated against the Vietnam War -- that they would shoot you over it. I couldn't believe... There was nothing I could do for Jeffrey or any of the other students. And that's part of history and that'll remain with me for the rest of my life."
Today at Kent State, at the 39th Commemorative Ceremony, Vecchio and Filo reunited for the first time at that spot. (They had met once earllier in 1995, at a colloquiem at Emerson University, but never at Kent State).
Filo, who was a photojournalism major in 1970, is now photography director for CBS in New York. Vecchio is a respiratory therapist in Florida.
May 4-6 & 10-13, 2012
Shows are Thursday-Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm
Perhaps Broadway’s greatest farce, this show is light, fast-paced, witty, irreverent and one of the funniest musicals ever written. It provides the perfect escape from life's troubles. The result is a non-stop laugh-fest in which a crafty slave tries to gain his freedom as a reward for his struggles to win the hand of a beautiful but slow-witted courtesan for his young master.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Pseudolus - Ken Ashford
Hysterium - Gray Smith
Senex - Miles Stanley
Domina - Christine Gorelick
Hero - Charlie Kluttz
Philia - Gracey Falk
Erronius - Lee McKusick
Miles Glorisosus - Mike Orsillo
Marcus Lycus - Neil Shepherd
Proteans - Justin Bulla, Josh Gerry, Bradley Phillis, Jacob Weinberg
Courtesans - Angela Brady, Ashley Howe, Sarah Jenkins, Natalie Juran, Scarlet Van Loon, Mary Lea Williams
FREE at MILLER PARK AMPHITHEATRE
May 19, 20, 26, 27 and June 2, 3 at 1:00 and 4:00 pm (no 4:00 pm on June 3)
Onje of Shakespeare's most-cherished comedies. Benedick and Beatrice are engaged in a very "merry war"; they both talk a mile a minute and proclaim their scorn for love, marriage, and each other. In contrast, Claudio and Hero are sweet young people who are rendered practically speechless by their love for one another. By means of "noting" (which sounds the same as "nothing," and which is gossip, rumour, and overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other, and Claudio is tricked into rejecting Hero at the altar. However, Dogberry, a Constable who is a master of malapropisms, discovers the evil trickery of the villain, Don John.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Benedick - Chad Edwards
Beatrice - Sally Meehan
Don Pedro - Mark March
Claudio - Carlos Luis Nieto
Hero - Devon Currie
Leonato - John Shea
Don J - Annie Weir
Margaret - Robyn Shute
Antonio - Lee Willard
Balthasar - Suzanne Vaughan
Borachio - Ken Ashford
Conrade - Rob Taylor
Friar Frances - Linda Minney
Dogberry - April Marshall
Verges - Sarah Jenkins
Sexton - Andrea Rivers
Messenger - Ryan Ball
Boy - Ben Taylor
Watch - True Jones and others TBA
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