Sunflowers originated in the Americas, but for a long time, especially in the 1800’s, has been planted and used a lot more in Eurasia. Today, a lot more is being produced in the U.S., because the potato chip industry prefers sunflower oil to the partially hydrogenated oils that their customers believe are healthier. Dan Charles’ story on NPR traces some of this history.
Category: Social World
Impressions of Monet
We took the middle and high school to see the Monet Water Lilies exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum today. It was a nice tour; we saw some paintings, and we learned a little something about the impressionists.
One thought that occurred to me during an interesting conversation on the bus back to school, was how the development of abstract thinking skills affects our perception of the more abstract art. After all, it usually requires more effort to appreciate, understand and become affected a piece the more abstract it is. Which would suggest that art appreciation would be useful practice for adolescents who are honing their higher-level cognitive skills.
The tour also left me with one unanswered question, however: are we seeing fog or smog in Monet’s painting of the Charing Cross Bridge in London.
London is famous for its fogs, but this painting was done in 1899, well into the industrial revolution, and the yellow tints suggest a pea-souper.
2012: Not the End of the World
I’ve fielded the question about if the world is going to end in 2012. My first-order answer has been to cite the poor level of success that previous predictions of apocalypse have had. NASA has had to address the problem, while C.G.P. Grey has a nice little video explaining the sources of the hysteria (he’s not very happy with the History Channel).
Dr. Strangelove
We watched Stanley Kubric’s, Dr. Strangelove, today as part of our mini film festival. Most of the middle and high school students got the choice of what to watch, but the Dr. Strangelove was required for the American History students.
My second question during our discussion after the movie was, “What does this have to do with the Cold War?” I got a number of blank stares. The next question was, “Do you know what the Cold War was?” Apparently they’ll be getting to that next semester.
Dr. H tells me that she’s heard the complaint from the college history department that incoming students don’t know much, if anything, about the Cold War. It’s now history. It occurred before any of them were born. Is this a lament? An observation about aging? I’m not sure.
Places to Visit
Cahokia‘s just one of almost a thousand sites around the world that UNESCO considers to form, “part of the cultural and natural heritage” of the world that has “outstanding universal value.”
It’s a remarkable selection of places, from natural geological wonders like the Grand Canyon, to biological preserves like Peru’s Manú National Park, to cultural landscapes like that of Bam, Iran.
The long, detailed descriptions of the importance of these sites makes the World Heritage List website is a remarkable resource for cultural and physical geography.
Cahokia Mounds
Almost a thousand years ago, 20,000 people lived at a place called Cahokia. At the center of their city, was the largest artificial mound in North America. A large part of Cahokia’s success is surely its location: near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers — just across the Mississippi from modern-day St. Louis. Yet less than 400 years later (see timeline) the city was abandoned, and no one is quite sure what happened.
Our middle and high school took a trip out to Cahokia last month. It was during the same intercession between quarters when we visited the Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Da Vinci Exhibition, and did our brief biological survey of the campus.
The elevation of the main mound, sitting on the flat Mississippi flood plain, with the St. Louis skyline in the distance, was a great place to talk about the importance of physical geography in the location of cities (your biggest cities are always going to be on rivers, or the ocean or, often, both) and to reflect on how history repeats itself — a once thriving metropolis is nothing now but displaced piles of alluvium and mystery.
View Cahokia in a larger map
Cahokia is a World Heritage Site, and it has an excellent museum. I particularly liked the detail in their life-sized reconstruction of a section of the city.
Their website is also good. Apart from the timeline, mentioned above, they have a nice interactive map for details about each of the numerous mounds, and a long page about the archeology.
The site is pretty big, so you can spend a fair amount of time exploring. Fall, when the leaves have turned color, and the air has cooled a little, is an excellent time to visit.
The Case Against the Electoral College
C.G.P Grey makes the case against the Electoral College in video form. He starts with how the Electoral College Works and continues with a well reasoned polemic against it: he’s big into democracy — one person, one vote.
How the Electoral College Works
The Trouble with the Electoral College
Should High Schoolers Be Able to Vote
Students in Lowell, Mass., are petitioning for the right to vote in their town. They argue that voting is an integral part of the civics they’re learning in high school, and they should be able to learn about, and vote on, issues in the communities where they grew up, and not have to wait until they’re in college.
Their campaign gained support of local politicians, cause the passage of a state law allowing the town to lower the voting age and even got a constitutional law professor (Lawrence Tribe) to write a letter supporting their case to the Massachusetts’ Secretary of State. They’re now organizing a ballot initiative for 2013.