Why Oklahoma Lawmakers Want to Ban AP US History -- NYMag →

This is just downright scary.

Representative Dan Fisher, who introduced the bill, lamented during Monday's hearing that the new AP U.S. History framework emphasizes "what is bad about America" and doesn't teach "American exceptionalism." 

I'm proud of my country and believe we've done more good than harm over our short history, but that doesn't mean we're always above reproach. It certainly doesn't mean we can't have our kids casting a critical eye on our past, not to mention present and future.

Krieger complained that the [AP] framework portrays the Founding Fathers as "bigots" and suggests that Manifest Destiny was "built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority," rather than "the belief that America had a mission to spread democracy and new technology across the continent," as he put it.

Nope, Mr. Kreiger, the AP framework is closer to being right.

Let's allow our kids to learn from the past (even the bad stuff) so they don't repeat our mistakes.

The holiday season 70 years ago

On the lookout for German snipers, a squad of Third Army Infantrymen move cautiously through the streets of Moircy, Belgium. 12/31/44. Co. C, 1st Bn., 345 Reg’t., 87th Inf. Div.

Seventy years ago, the Nazis made one last ditch effort, a surprise attack that drove a wedge between Allied forces and caused heavy losses in men and territory. German fuel shortages and the return of clear weather -- allowing Allied air-superiority -- eventually turned the tide back to the Allied cause.

The Germans called it "Operation Watch on the Rhine," while the French called it the "Battle of the Ardennes." The Allied Command called it the "Ardennes Counteroffensive."

History knows it as the "Battle of the Bulge."

My father-in-law, Bob Match, was there.

Read an article from the US National Archives.

sometimes creating feels like this

illustration by Geoff McFetridge via Tumblr

Sam & Mattie's Teen Zombie Movie

This is a movie that deserves to be funded. Check it out. I did, and now my name is going to be spray painted on one of the post apocalyptic walls of the film set. How cool is that?

Pinterest

nprfreshair:

Fresh Air tech contributor Alexis Madgrigal writes that Pinterest could be a competitor with Google search: 

Pinterest is mostly known as a place people go to find things to buy or make. The company likes to say that Pinterest is about planning your future, but it’s also just about seeing – visually — a bunch of interesting stuff on a theme, all in one place. So there are boards for wedding planning and child rearing and men’s linen suits, but also for kittens and model airplanes and mountains. Some boards are just a mood like “monumental” or “cute” or “adventurous.”

Despite this popularity, Pinterest has never attracted the same kind of press or adulation as the companies that grew up around the same time — businesses like Instagram, Uber or even Dropbox. Pinterest just isn’t seen as a hardcore technology company that will follow the path of Google and Facebook. To some people, it doesn’t feel like a world-shaping product. “It’s just a digital scrapbook,” people say.

But Internet companies are valuable in large part because of the kind of data that they possess. And Pinterest possesses some really, really interesting data. The first part of it is that they are a repository of things that people would like to have or do. They’re a database of intentions. And that has got to be valuable to marketers and advertisers.

But it goes deeper than that. What Pinterest has created — almost unintentionally — is a database of things in the world that matter to human beings. While Google crunches numbers to figure out what’s relevant, Pinterest’s human users define what is relevant for a given topic. And because of that, they could become a legitimate competitor to Google, the world’s most valuable Internet company.

Read the full essay

I’ve never once looked at PinInterest. Am I missing something?