Tag: History

If we must rely on ‘history and tradition’ to assess gun laws, does racist history count?

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As attorneys for the state of California prepared recently to defend in federal court a state law requiring background checks for ammunition purchases, they found themselves in an awkward position.

Under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 2022, gun control measures are legitimate only if they are deeply rooted in American “history and tradition” or are sufficiently similar to some other centuries-old law. The state lawyers had conducted a deep dive through hundreds of years of American jurisprudence and identified dozens of historical laws that they felt bolstered the modern law’s legitimacy by showing that the government has long limited access to firearms and ammunition.

But there was a problem: Many of the historical laws they found were virulently racist, restricting access to weaponry for enslaved people, Indigenous Americans and other racial minorities.

In the end, the attorneys in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office decided to push ahead and cite the laws, but with a major caveat.

Nikki Shrieves, 41, right, during a firearms education course in Norwalk in October 2023. She and her classmates are holding unloaded 9-millimeter Glocks.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

“The Attorney General in no way condones laws that target certain groups on the basis of race, gender, nationality, or other protected characteristic,” they wrote in a footnote to their 2023 filing, “but these laws are part of the history of the Second Amendment and may be relevant to determining the traditions that define its scope, even if they are inconsistent with other constitutional guarantees.”

Last week, U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez rebuked the state for relying on such racist laws in a decision that tossed out California’s ammunition background check law as unconstitutional. Benitez rejected the notion that they might represent a legal tradition to be considered under the high court’s new history standard in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen.

“These fifty laws identified by the Attorney General constitute a long, embarrassing, disgusting, insidious, reprehensible list of examples of government tyranny towards our own people,” Benitez wrote — and such “repugnant historical examples of prejudice and bigotry will not be used to justify the State’s current infringement on the constitutional rights of citizens.”

On Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals halted Benitez’s decision from taking effect — keeping the ammunition laws in place — while the state appeals.

In the meantime, the question of whether California and litigants in other gun cases nationwide can invoke old, racist laws remains unsettled, and it’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will allow such laws to inform the “history and tradition” standard moving forward.

In a nation built on chattel slavery and the brutal colonization of Indigenous communities, racist laws are an inescapable part of our legal tradition despite efforts at reform. And that reality is now front and center in cases challenging gun control measures across the country — to the discomfort of nearly everyone involved.

“If we look at ‘history and tradition,’” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who focuses on 2nd Amendment law, “we see a whole bunch of racist gun laws.”

Liberal states such as California and other advocates for gun control are in a quandary. They don’t want to focus attention on old, racist laws that are anathema to their modern commitments to diversity, equality and justice. But doing so may be their last, best chance at upholding background checks and other gun control measures.

Conservative jurists and gun rights advocates have strongly backed the Supreme Court’s originalist view of 2nd Amendment law, which gives modern deference to the intentions of the nation’s founders at the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. They bristle over the fact that many of the laws at the time took for granted the government’s right to place limits on at least some people’s gun rights.

Scholars say the issue highlights the absurdity of the Supreme Court’s position that the legitimacy of any modern gun law should hinge on whether such a regulation might have fit into a centuries-old legal system — especially one so profoundly flawed in other ways. Liberals also scoff at the notion that the authors of the Bill of Rights could have envisioned modern assault rifles.

Winkler said the debate “points out the central problem of 2nd Amendment law today: that the government has to rely on ancient laws that were designed for a very different society.”

“One of the major concerns around gun laws then was keeping Black people powerless in the face of white supremacy,” he said. “Our gun laws today reflect modern concerns, not the concerns of yesterday.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the rejection of such racist laws as historical “analogues” under the Bruen test by conservative judges such as Benitez reflects a troubling double standard. Benitez has otherwise embraced Bruen’s historical lens, including in recent decisions — also under appeal — that struck down California’s bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

“Judge Benitez looks at history when it supports his position and ignores it (or dismisses it) when it doesn’t,” Chemerinsky wrote in an email to The Times.

“It is absurd to decide what gun regulations should be allowed based on the law of 1791,” he wrote. “But if we are going to do that, we have to accept the awful aspects of the law of 1791.”

Others say the absurdity lies in the suggestion that unconstitutional, racist laws of the past should hold any legal weight today.

Stephen Halbrook, a conservative author who argues against broad restrictions on the 2nd Amendment, said he is “glad this is being called out” in Benitez’s latest opinion.

“This should never have been an argument,” Halbrook said, arguing that past injustices do not justify modern ones when it comes to people’s constitutional rights.

Some Black gun owners also expressed unease at the idea that old, racist gun laws should be revived in discussions about 2nd Amendment limits.

Rick Archer, 57, of Yorba Linda, is a Black former U.S. Marine who now teaches basic gun safety and concealed-carry training courses in Orange County. He said he views many of California’s modern gun laws as racist, if not in their explicit language then in their origins and their enforcement in communities of color.

As one example, he mentioned the Mulford Act, which banned the open carry of loaded weapons without a permit in California, and was rushed into law by state legislators after members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense staged an armed protest at the state Capitol in 1967.

Archer said his white neighbors in Yorba Linda today are “armed to the teeth,” and within their rights to be, while many Black people and other racial minorities in some of the most dangerous cities and neighborhoods in the state are precluded from defending themselves with firearms.

Archer said the state, if it was serious about dismantling racism, would be trying to dismantle its vast system of racist gun laws — not trying to uphold them by citing even more explicitly racist laws of the past.

“We’re supposed to be moving forward, not moving backward,” he said. “If you have to go that far back to justify putting limits on our freedoms — especially if you are going back to racist codes — then this is not the progressive, mixed state that I thought we were in.”

Jake Charles, an associate professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, has studied and written about the issue of old, racist laws being relevant — or not — under Bruen’s “history and tradition” test.

He said he doesn’t believe modern gun laws should be upheld or tossed based on a historical test, but since such a test is required under Bruen, it should at least be honest and applied consistently — regardless of whose modern position on guns it bolsters.

Charles noted that much of the discussion of late has centered on racist laws that excluded enslaved people and other racial minorities from possessing weapons, but there were also racist motivations for many old laws that cemented gun rights for white people. Some early Southern laws, for example, required white men to bring guns to church services as a precaution against slave revolts, he said.

“The expansion of gun rights was often motivated by the same kind of discriminatory rationales that some of the regulations were motivated by,” he said. “They were to enforce white supremacy.”

Charles said racist laws of centuries past should be viewed skeptically by the courts, but not dismissed wholesale. “Whether or not these laws are unconstitutional, they can tell us something about what kind of scope of government power the founding generation would have thought the legislature had” to restrict gun rights or access, he said.

The so-called abstraction approach to gun law precedent has been applied by judges before, including in a pre-Bruen case by then-Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett — who is now a Supreme Court justice, Charles wrote last year in the Stanford Law Review.

Barrett issued a dissenting opinion in the case Kanter v. Barr in which she cited old racist gun laws against enslaved people, Indigenous people and Catholics as clearly unjust, but nonetheless informative — helping to establish a clear tradition of lawmakers restricting access to firearms for people they deemed public threats.

Barrett’s approach, Charles wrote, suggested that old racist laws “can provide hints about earlier generations’ understanding of legislative power divorced from their concrete application to specific groups.”

Charles said the Supreme Court could provide more guidance on the issue in its forthcoming decision in United States vs. Rahimi, where it is considering the constitutionality of laws that prohibit the possession of firearms by people under domestic-violence restraining orders.

However, the court may be limited from tackling the issue in full in the Rahimi case because the U.S. government recently shifted its strategy, dropping references to old, racist laws limiting access to firearms for enslaved people and Indigenous Americans that it had cited in lower courts when it reached the high court.

When Justice Clarence Thomas asked why it did so during oral arguments, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the government had decided that such laws spoke to a different issue than the one in Rahimi — in part because “those categories of people were viewed as being not among the people protected by the Second Amendment” at the time the old laws were enforced.

In other words, enslaved and Indigenous people weren’t considered citizens — or beneficiaries of the 2nd Amendment’s protections. (Benitez cited a similar argument in his recent decision in the ammunition case.)

Charles said the Supreme Court could weigh in further on racist old laws serving as historical analogues in another case called Range vs. Attorney General, which considers whether individuals convicted of felony crimes can be prohibited from possessing firearms.

If it does, Charles said, he will be watching closely to see where Barrett lands — and whether she once again argues for considering old racist laws as relevant history.

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Kevin Rector

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February 7, 2024
PolitiFact – Abraham Lincoln wasn’t removed from 1860 ballots; comparison to Trump removals faulty

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Days before the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear former President Donald Trump’s appeal of his removal from Colorado’s March 5 Republican primary ballot, social media users compared his electoral plight with Abraham Lincoln’s in 1860.

A Jan. 26 Instagram post reshared a video in which a man describes efforts to remove Trump from the ballot. The man compared the situation with the 1860 election, and said President Abraham Lincoln was removed from ballots.

“The last time Democrats removed a Republican from the ballot was 1860,” he said. “That candidate was Abraham Lincoln. He still went on to win, and the Civil War started the next year. He also won that.” He claimed that Trump was being removed from the ballot “for saying the elections were rigged.”

The video was originally shared by its creator in a Dec. 20, 2023, Instagram post that garnered more than 150,000 likes.

We have seen numerous similar claims in recent months, comparing efforts to remove Trump from ballots with Lincoln’s 1860 election. Many said that Lincoln was removed from ballots in 10 slaveholding states. One TikTok video shared a video of Fox News host and commentator Jesse Watters making the false claim on his show.

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Like the Instagram video’s claim, the posts are wrong about why some are seeking to remove Trump from the primary ballot in dozens of states, and about Lincoln’s ballot status in 1860.

Trump ballot challenges

Formal challenges to Trump’s inclusion on Republican primary ballots have been made in at least 35 states, according to a New York Times review. Of those, only Colorado and Maine have taken steps to remove Trump from their state’s ballot, although those cases are being challenged in court. As of Feb. 3, 17 states have rejected efforts to remove Trump from the ballot, and cases in 16 states are unresolved, the Times said.

The challenges are not for simply questioning the election results, as the Instagram video says, but over Trump’s actions on or before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

In December, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump was ineligible for the White House and should be removed from the state’s Republican March 5 primary ballot based on the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, Section 3, which says that no person who has “engaged in insurrection” can hold the office of president.

The Colorado lawsuit was filed by a group of Republican and independent voters. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in the case Feb. 8, and a decision will likely impact challenges to Trump’s candidacy in other states.

On Dec. 28, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, unilaterally removed Trump from the Republican primary ballot after three challenges by voters, also citing the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. Trump has appealed that decision to a Maine Superior Court.

Was Lincoln removed from ballots in 1860?

Historians told PolitiFact that the claim comparing Trump’s ballot removals to the Lincoln era shows a misunderstanding about how general elections worked in the 1800s. (Primary elections didn’t come into general use in the U.S. until the early 20th century.)

Jonathan W. White, a Christopher Newport University American studies professor, said in the mid-19th century, political parties were responsible for printing and distributing their own ballots to supporters. Other experts said because there was little support for Lincoln in slaveholding Southern states, the Republican Party didn’t waste resources printing and handing out ballots there.

“To be fair to the gentleman in the video, I’ve heard professional historians make the mistake of saying that ‘Lincoln wasn’t on the ballot.’ The truth is that nobody banned him,” White said. “It’s just that there weren’t any Republican Party organizations, or voters, in most of the South, which meant that there wouldn’t be any Republican ballots for Lincoln to be on.”

Cecily Zander, a Texas Woman’s University assistant history professor, said after being “frustrated” by the “erroneous” comparison, she wrote a blog post about it on Emerging Civil War, a website that shares scholarly articles about the Civil War.

Voters in Lincoln’s 1860 election would have submitted a “party ticket” — supplied by their party — in the ballot box at their polling place, Zander wrote. That ticket wouldn’t include candidates from opposing parties, only the candidates for one party. Because the Republican party didn’t expect a large number of votes in places such as Alabama or Mississippi, which at the time were majority Democratic, it didn’t distribute tickets in those states, she wrote.

“It was a waste of time and resources to send thousands of Lincoln ballots to the South, just to have them sit in unopened boxes on Election Day,” Zander wrote.

She shared an image of an 1860 Republican ticket in Iowa in her post, and more examples can be seen on this National Museum of American History webpage.

Louis Masur, a Rutgers University American studies and history professor, said Democrats didn’t remove Lincoln from ballots. He didn’t appear because the Republican party “in effect, did not exist in those states.”

Our ruling

A man in an Instagram video said, “Last time Democrats removed a Republican from the ballot” was Lincoln in 1860.

Comparisons with Lincoln’s 1860 election ignore the differences between elections then and now, historians said. Political parties were responsible for providing single-party tickets to voters; Republicans had little support in the South, so chose not to distribute tickets in some states.

No ballot featured candidates from multiple parties, like those used in today’s general elections, so Lincoln could not have been removed from one.

The claim is False.

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February 6, 2024
PolitiFact – Nikki Haley said Texas could secede from the U.S. Here’s why that’s wrong

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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently said she believes that states should have the right to do what their residents want to do — even if that means seceding from the United States.

In a Jan. 31 episode of “The Breakfast Club” radio show, host Charlamagne tha God asked Haley about Texas’ border dispute with the federal government and whether she still believes states have the right to secede, pointing to her previous remarks on the subject.

On the radio show, Haley acknowledged that Texas is not going to secede, but said, “If Texas decides they want to do that, they can do that. … If that whole state says, ‘We don’t want to be part of America anymore,’ I mean, that’s their decision to make.”

Haley later walked back her comments in a Feb. 4 CNN interview, saying the Constitution doesn’t allow states to secede. Haley’s campaign did not answer PolitiFact’s request for comment.

“What I do think they have the right to do is have the power to protect themselves and do all that,” Haley said on CNN. “Texas has talked about seceding for a long time. The Constitution doesn’t allow for that. But what I will say is … where’s that coming from? That’s coming from the fact that people don’t think that (the) government is listening to them.”

For months, Texas and the federal government have been locked in a tense standoff over border security measures as record numbers of migrants illegally cross into the U.S. from Mexico. Meanwhile, social media has been awash with claims about Texas seceding and warnings of an impending civil war.

“Texas is about to become its own country to stop a civil war from occurring,” a Jan. 30 Instagram post claimed.

To address Haley’s initial comment and the internet buzz, we asked constitutional law experts whether a state could secede from the U.S. The consensus was a resounding “no.”

Experts said the Civil War tested and settled this question 159 years ago, and Haley’s radio show remarks ignored this significant part of American history. It wasn’t the first time Haley, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, had misrepresented Civil War history.

The Constitution does not say anything explicitly for or against secession, experts said.

“But it’s pretty significant evidence that during the debates over ratification, when states were deciding whether or not to join this new union, no one said, ‘Well, if you don’t like it, you can always leave,’” said Kermit Roosevelt, a University of Pennsylvania law professor.

Roosevelt said if Haley was making a moral or political argument, she could appeal to the Declaration of Independence as the 11 seceding southern states did at the time of the Civil War.

“But that’s not the Constitution, and the aspect of the Declaration that we consider foundational to America now is more ‘all men are created equal’ than ‘it is the right of the people to alter or abolish’ their government,” Roosevelt said. “So Haley is offering a Confederate view of the Constitution that cost us over half a million lives.”

After the Civil War, in 1869, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Texas v. White that the U.S. is “an indestructible union” and states do not have the right to unilaterally secede.

“When Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation,” the ruling stated. “There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.”

The late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also weighed in on secession’s legality: “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede,” Scalia wrote in a 2006 letter.

If Texas or another state wanted to secede and the state reached an agreement via Congress with the rest of the country, then it might work, said Brian Kalt, a Michigan State University law professor.

However, it’s more likely a secession attempt “would constitute an insurrection against the United States that the central government would be entirely justified in suppressing by armed force, just as Lincoln did the Confederacy,” said Frank Bowman, a University of Missouri law professor.

Our ruling

Haley said, “If that whole state says, ‘We don’t want to be part of America anymore,’ I mean, that’s their decision to make.”

Constitutional law experts told us the Civil War’s outcome and Supreme Court precedent say the opposite. We rate Haley’s claim False.

RELATED: A primer on Civil War history and what Donald Trump and Nikki Haley got wrong

RELATED: Razor wire and a blocked Border Patrol. What’s going on in Eagle Pass, Texas?

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February 5, 2024
In Northern Ireland, ‘a Protestant state’ finally has a Catholic leader

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Demands and priorities

Britain is providing the executive an extra £3.3 billion to start patching holes in services and pay long-delayed wage hikes that just triggered the biggest public sector strike in Northern Ireland’s history. The trouble is, the head of Northern Ireland’s civil service, Jayne Brady, has already told the new leaders that these eye-watering sums are still too small to pay the required bills. The U.K. expects Stormont to raise regional taxes, something local leaders have been loath to do.

If anything can unite unionist and republican politicians, it’s their shared demand for the U.K. Treasury to keep sending more moolah — even though the British government already has committed to pay Northern Ireland over the odds into perpetuity at a new rate of £1.24 versus an equivalent £1 spent in England.

Money demands and spending priorities should underpin short-term stability at Stormont. But a U.K. general election looms within months and DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson wants to reverse his party’s losses to Sinn Féin. That could be complicated by the fact that he’s just compromised on Brexit trade rules in a fashion that distresses and confuses many within his own divided party, leaving him vulnerable.

To strengthen his leadership, Donaldson boosted pragmatic allies and sought to neuter less reasonable opponents in Saturday’s DUP moves at Stormont.

The assembly’s new non-partisan speaker will be DUP lawmaker Edwin Poots, who defeated Donaldson for the party leadership in 2021 only to be tossed out almost immediately.

That move puts Poots — who used his previous role as Stormont’s agriculture minister to block essential resources for the required post-Brexit checks at ports — into a new strait-jacket of neutrality.

Little-Pengelly, by contrast, is one of Donaldson’s most trusted lieutenants and a Stormont insider. He put her into his own assembly seat when, shortly after the 2022 election, Donaldson dumped it in favor of staying an MP in London.

While Stormont is never more than one crisis away from another collapse, for Saturday, peace reigned — and an Irish republican, committed to Northern Ireland’s eventual dissolution, is in charge of making the place work.

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Shawn Pogatchnik

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February 3, 2024
Abraham Lincoln: Fun Facts, Biography, and More
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Our country has had many presidents, all with their own trials and contributions. Some of them stand out more than others, and our nation’s 16th leader is one of them. It’s been more than 150 years since Lincoln held office, but his legacy continues to be felt today. From his biography and facts about his life to videos and books, here’s everything you need to know about Abraham Lincoln.

Don’t miss our free downloadable. Grab your full set of ready-to-go Abraham Lincoln Google Slides with all of the information below, including kid-friendly explanations, a timeline, and more.

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Abraham Lincoln Biography

When and where was Abraham Lincoln born?

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in LaRue County, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809.

Where did Abraham Lincoln grow up?

Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Indiana and later to Illinois. He grew up in poverty. Lincoln only went to school for about 18 months because he had to work to provide money for his family instead. He loved to read, and he read while working at jobs including farmhand and store clerk.

How tall was Abraham Lincoln?

Abraham Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall, making him the tallest U.S. president in history.

Who was Abraham Lincoln’s wife?

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

In 1842, Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd, the daughter of a prominent Kentucky slave-owning family. They lived in Springfield, Illinois, and had four sons.

What was Abraham Lincoln’s job before he was president?

Lincoln was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and was a practicing attorney before becoming president.

Did Abraham Lincoln have slaves?

In the White House, Lincoln had many servants. All his servants were free men and women, although many had previously been enslaved or were descended from slave families.

What did Abraham Lincoln think about slavery?

Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery was wrong. But he was not an abolitionist or someone who wanted to immediately abolish slavery and make enslaved people equal with white people. Lincoln argued that the idea that “all men are created equal” did apply to white and Black people, but that did not mean that he thought Black and white people should have the same rights.

When did Abraham Lincoln become president?

Abraham Lincoln became the 16th president of the United States in 1861.

What did Abraham Lincoln accomplish as president?

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

When he was president, Abraham Lincoln built the Republican party into a national organization. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in the Confederate states (but not states along the border between the North and South). In 1864, he won reelection and started a plan for peace as the Civil War came to an end.

What was the Emancipation Proclamation?

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the United States was starting the third year of the Civil War. The proclamation declared “all persons held as slaves” within the Confederate states as “free.” It did not give Black people the same rights as white people, however. The Emancipation Proclamation is now on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

When did Abraham Lincoln die?

Abraham Lincoln died on the morning of April 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C.

How did Abraham Lincoln die?

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. Booth thought he was helping the South by killing Lincoln.

Watch this video above about the impact Lincoln’s assassination had on the United States.

How did Abraham Lincoln change the world?

Abraham Lincoln is one of the best-known and most respected U.S. presidents. The Civil War started when the South seceded from the Union. Lincoln was committed to preserving the Union and kept the United States together while maintaining democracy. He ended slavery and kept the Southern states from seceding, or separating, from the country. This meant that, after Lincoln’s presidency, the United States could be a “more perfect Union” that was free.

Where is the Lincoln Memorial?

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

The Lincoln Memorial is in Washington, D.C. It features a statue of Abraham Lincoln inside the monument, and written behind the statue are the words: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

Where is Lincoln buried?

Lincoln is not buried at the Lincoln Memorial. His final resting place is the Lincoln Tomb in Illinois.

Abraham Lincoln Timeline

We Are Teachers

Here is a timeline of major events in Abraham Lincoln’s life:
- February 12, 1809: Abraham Lincoln is born in Kentucky.
- 1816: Lincoln’s family moves to Indiana, where they live in a cabin.
- 1818-1819: Lincoln’s mother dies, and his father remarries.
- 1830: Lincoln’s family moves to Illinois. He works splitting rails (cutting logs), as a postmaster, and as a member of a boat crew.
- 1832: Lincoln runs for political office in the Illinois State Legislature and loses.
- 1834: Lincoln runs again and wins a seat in the Illinois State Legislature.
- 1836: Lincoln becomes a lawyer.
- 1842: Lincoln marries Mary Todd.
- 1846: Lincoln is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
- 1858: Lincoln runs for U.S. Senate. He becomes well known for his speeches and beliefs.
- November 6, 1860: Lincoln wins the presidency. This upsets the Southern states who believe Lincoln will abolish slavery.
- December 20, 1860: South Carolina is the first state to secede from the Union.
- 1861-1864: The American Civil War continues. As many as 850,000 people die.
- 1863: Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
- 1864: Lincoln wins reelection.
- April 14, 1865: John Wilkes Booth, a pro-slavery advocate, shoots Lincoln during a theater performance.
- April 15, 1865: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, dies.
Facts About Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born poor.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin. Although Lincoln’s parents could not read, his stepmother noticed that he was very smart and encouraged his reading and studying.

Abraham Lincoln lost his mother when he was a child.

Lincoln’s mother died when he was just 9 years old. Just a year later, his father married Sarah Bush Johnston. Fortunately, he had a very good relationship with his new stepmother.

Abraham Lincoln only received 18 months of formal education.

We Are Teachers

Lincoln forwent his education to spend his time working to help support his family.

Abraham Lincoln is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Over 12 years, he appeared in 300 matches. He only lost once!

Abraham Lincoln was a self-taught lawyer.

Just as he taught himself to read, Lincoln also taught himself law. Incredibly, he passed the bar exam in 1936 and went on to practice law.

Abraham Lincoln had four kids.

While Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln welcomed four children—Robert, Tad, Edward, and Willie—only Robert survived to adulthood.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846.

He served a term as a U.S. congressman for a year in 1846 but was very unpopular during that time because he strongly opposed the Mexican-American War.

Abraham Lincoln hated the nickname “Abe.”

We Are Teachers

This might be one of the most surprising facts about Abraham Lincoln. While our 16th president is often referred to as “Abe” Lincoln, or even “Honest Abe,” the truth is that he didn’t like the moniker.

Abraham Lincoln established the Secret Service.

Lincoln created the Secret Service to stop widespread counterfeiting of money in the United States.

Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. president to hold a patent.

While his invention (No. 6469) was registered as a device for “buoying vessels over shoals” in 1849, it was never actually used on boats or made commercially available.

Abraham Lincoln launched the National Banking System.

While president, Lincoln set up the first National Banking System, leading to the implementation of the standard U.S. currency.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore.

The massive sculpture carved into the Black Hills region of South Dakota, which has been protested by Native Americans for years, features the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans enlisted in the war.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation allowed African American men to officially serve in the U.S. armed forces for the first time. By the end of the Civil War, 190,000 African Americans enlisted in the Union army.

Lincoln wanted African Americans to be able to vote.

He was the first president to advocate for giving African American veterans the right to vote.

Lincoln is the most written-about figure in American history.

We Are Teachers

Abraham Lincoln is the most written-about figure in American history. More than 18,000 books have been written about him.

Lincoln was an animal lover.

He had many pets including dogs, cats, horses, and goats.

Lincoln was not born in one of the 13 original colonies.

He was the first president not born in one of the 13 original states.

Lincoln was the first president to be photographed at his inauguration.

Lincoln was photographed at his inauguration, and his murderer, John Wilkes Booth, can be seen in the photo as well.

Abraham Lincoln’s Speeches

Lincoln made many speeches, but the most famous are the House Divided speech and the Gettysburg Address.

House Divided Speech

We Are Teachers;
TimelessReader1 via YouTube

The House Divided speech was given at the Republican Convention in 1858, before the Civil War.

Listen to the House Divided speech.

The Gettysburg Address

We Are Teachers; miniadler via YouTube

Lincoln gave the speech to dedicate a portion of the Gettysburg battlefield to memorialize Civil War soldiers.

Watch this video about the Gettysburg Address.

Abraham Lincoln Pictures

Photography was invented in the 1820s and first used in the 1830s, so we have some photos of Abraham Lincoln, as well as sketches and drawings.

Abraham Lincoln as a young man

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

Abraham Lincoln sitting with the men in his cabinet

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

Photo taken in 1863 and printed in 1901

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

Famous photo taken in 1863, eight days before the Gettysburg Address

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

Lincoln wearing his famous top hat, with generals at a Civil War site

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

The 2nd inauguration of Abraham Lincoln

We Are Teachers; Wikimedia Commons

Videos About Abraham Lincoln

These videos help us understand more about the life, experiences, and impact of President Abraham Lincoln.

Video Biography: Abraham Lincoln

WeAreTeachers; Biography via YouTube

Video Biography: Abraham Lincoln for Kids

We Are Teachers; Homeschool Pop via YouTube

Video: Every Known Photograph of Abraham Lincoln

We Are Teachers;
Max Power via YouTube

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Abraham Lincoln was a master of statements about freedom, democracy, and philosophy. Here are a few of our favorite quotes.

You may burn my body to ashes, and scatter them to the winds of heaven; you may drag my soul down to the regions of darkness and despair to be tormented forever; but you will never get me to support a measure which I believe to be wrong. —Abraham Lincoln

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It is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters who choose to vote, that constitute political power. —Abraham Lincoln

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. —Abraham Lincoln

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It’s my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues. —Abraham Lincoln

A house divided against itself cannot stand. —Abraham Lincoln

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Get more quotes: 110+ Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Books About Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln has inspired books about his presidency, honesty, and top hat. Engage kids in learning more about his life with books from these lists.

Abe Lincoln’s Hat by Martha Brenner

Buy it: Abe Lincoln’s Hat at Amazon

Who Was Abraham Lincoln? by Janet Pascal

Buy it: Who Was Abraham Lincoln? at Amazon

Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books by Kay Winters

Buy it: Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books at Amazon

I Am Abraham Lincoln by Brad Meltzer

Buy it: I Am Abraham Lincoln at Amazon

Abe Lincoln’s Dream by Lane Smith

Buy it: Abe Lincoln’s Dream at Amazon

More Abraham Lincoln Teaching Resources

Use these teaching resources for even more information and ideas on how to teach about the 16th president:

Get Your Free Abraham Lincoln Google Slides

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Just click the button below to fill out the form and get instant access to free downloadable Google Slides with all the information included above, including Abraham Lincoln facts, a kid-friendly biography, a timeline, and more.
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Samantha Cleaver

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February 2, 2024
Discovery Education Offers Educators New Resources Supporting Black History Month Observances
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Charlotte, NC. — Discovery Education today unveiled a new collection of engaging, high-quality digital learning resources supporting Black History Month observances. Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform nurtures student curiosity and supports learning wherever it takes place.

The following resources are now available for users of the award-winning Discovery Education Experience K-12 learning platform:
- Civil Rights Ready-to-Use Resources: Through the DE Original Series, Need to Know, students travel through time to investigate the Civil Rights Movement. Each episode is paired with Ready-to-Use Lessons and PDF activities that align with the topics covered and features additional historical context and primary source resources.
- Happy Black History Month video: In this new video from Sesame Workshop for students in grades PK-2, Elmo, Gabrielle, Tamir, and Abby come together to celebrate the contributions of Black and African American communities.
All these resources and more are available on the Celebrating Black History channel within Discovery Education Experience. Connecting educators to a vast collection of high-quality, standard-aligned content, ready-to-use digital lessons, intuitive quiz and activity creation tools, and professional learning resources, Discovery Education’s K-12 platform facilitates the creation of engaging instructional experiences for all students.

“At Discovery Education, we are committed to providing educators digital content that helps all students see themselves in the real-world,” said Robin Porter, Vice President of Digital Content at Discovery Education. “This new content collection for Black History Month ensures educators have high-quality resources for their Black History Month observances.”

Discovery Education also offers many free resources educators can integrate into their Black History Month observances. Among the free resources are:
- STEM Career Profiles: The Black History Month collection from the STEM Careers Coalition celebrates the careers of Black leaders in STEM during Black History Month and beyond. The collection of dynamic, on-demand resources supports educators’ efforts to drive deeper student engagement by connecting classroom lessons to the real-world. Career profile videos show students a variety of STEM careers across software engineering, chemistry, and technology support.
The STEM Careers Coalition solves critical gaps in representation in the STEM professional workforce. The Coalition is an alliance of industries and non-profit organizations that has provided equitable access to STEM resources and career connections since its launch in 2019. The Coalition will continue to ignite student curiosity and influence a diverse future STEM workforce and reach 10 million teachers and students by 2025.
- Virtual Field Trip: The Courage to Act Virtual Field Trip shares the stories of young people standing up as individuals, groups, or as a community to make the world a better place. Students meet a peer who has created a project that stands up against injustice, hear about survivors of the Holocaust, and learn from community leaders. An accompanying educator guide provides teachers with materials and activities for before, during, and after the virtual field trip.
This virtual field trip is part of Teaching with Testimony, a program with USC Shoah Foundation that connects students to the power of testimony from the survivors and witnesses of genocide, inspiring students to find their voices and act for a better future.

For more information about Discovery Education’s award-winning digital resources and professional learning solutions visit www.discoveryeducation.com, and stay connected with Discovery Education on social media through X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

About Discovery Education
Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports learning wherever it takes place. Through its award-winning multimedia content, instructional supports, innovative classroom tools, and corporate partnerships, Discovery Education helps educators deliver equitable learning experiences engaging all students and supporting higher academic achievement on a global scale. Discovery Education serves approximately 4.5 million educators and 45 million students worldwide, and its resources are accessed in over 100 countries and territories. Inspired by the global media company Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. Discovery Education partners with districts, states, and trusted organizations to empower teachers with leading edtech solutions that support the success of all learners. Explore the future of education at www.discoveryeducation.com.

eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.

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ESchool News Staff

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February 2, 2024
This is Not a Drill

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Hawaiians respond to a threat of nuclear attack and a survivor tells of coping with the Hiroshima bombing.

It is 41 minutes and 40 seconds to midnight in Honolulu. Heat rises from the asphalt in Hawaii’s capital. It is a beautiful day and people are out for strolls and running errands. Suddenly, sounds of sirens cut through the air. TV broadcasts, radio shows, and mobile phones are flooded with the following message: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” Panic descends throughout the island. Thousands of goodbye messages to loved ones are sent – even ones containing dramatic declarations or confessions. It took authorities almost one hour to let people know this was an error. We hear from people who tell us how they coped with the frightening events of this day in 2018.

We also hear of the harrowing experience of surviving an actual nuclear attack. Toshiko Tanaka was six years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on her city of Hiroshima. “I remember the horror of that day: blinding light like thousands of strobe lights, my body thrown to the ground.” The atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were the only time nuclear weapons have been used. Today, about 120,000 Hibakusha – survivors of the bombings – are still alive. Tanaka tells us of her life as one of these survivors, and of the work those bombings inspired her to do. She is 84 years old now and has dedicated her life to fighting against nuclear proliferation.

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January 31, 2024
Argentina, Once One of the Richest Countries, Is Now One of the Poorest. Javier Milei Could Help Fix That.

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Argentina actually elected a libertarian president.

Javier Milei campaigned with a chainsaw, promising to cut the size of government.

Argentina’s leftists had so clogged the country’s economic arteries with regulations that what once was one of the world’s richest countries is now one of the poorest.

Inflation is more than 200 percent.

People save their whole lives—and then find their savings worth nearly nothing.

They got so fed up they did something never done before in modern history: They elected a full-throated libertarian.

Milei understands that government can’t create wealth.

He surprised diplomats at the World Economic Forum this month by saying, “The state is the problem!”

He spoke up for capitalism: “Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state…. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution.”

Go, Milei! I wish current American politicians talked that way.

In the West, young people turn socialist. In Argentina, they live under socialist policies. They voted for Milei.

Sixty-nine percent of voters under 25 voted for him. That helped him win by a whopping 3 million votes.

He won promising to reverse “decades of decadence.” He told the Economic Forum, “If measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade, and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.”

Right.

Poor countries demonstrate that again and again.

The media say Milei will never pass his reforms, and leftists may yet stop him.

But already, “He was able to repeal rent controls, price controls,” says economist Daniel Di Martino in my new video. He points out that Milei already “eliminated all restrictions on exports and imports, all with one sign of a pen.”

“He can just do that without Congress?” I ask.

“The president of Argentina has a lot more power than the president of the United States.”

Milei also loosened rules limiting where airlines can fly.

“Now [some] air fares are cheaper than bus fares!” says Di Martino.

He scrapped laws that say, “Buy in Argentina.” I point out that America has “Buy America” rules.

“It only makes poor people poorer because it increases costs!” Di Martino replies, “Why shouldn’t Argentinians be able to buy Brazilian pencils or Chilean grapes?”

“To support Argentina,” I push back.

“Guess what?” Says Di Martino, “Not every country is able to produce everything at the lowest cost. Imagine if you had to produce bananas in America.”

Argentina’s leftist governments tried to control pretty much everything.

“The regulations were such that everything not explicitly legal was illegal,” laughs Di Martino. “Now…everything not illegal is legal.”

One government agency Milei demoted was a “Department for Women, Gender and Diversity.” DiMartino says that reminds him of Venezuela’s Vice Ministry for Supreme Social Happiness. “These agencies exist just so government officials can hire their cronies.”

Cutting government jobs and subsidies for interest groups is risky for vote-seeking politicians. There are often riots in countries when politicians cut subsidies. Sometimes politicians get voted out. Or jailed.

“What’s incredible about Milei,” notes Di Martino, “is that he was able to win on the promise of cutting subsidies.”

That is remarkable. Why would Argentinians vote for cuts?

“Argentinians are fed up with the status quo,” replies Di Martino.

Milei is an economist. He named his dogs after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Lucas, all libertarian economists.

I point out that most Americans don’t know who those men were.

“The fact that he’s naming his dogs after these famous economists,” replies Di Martino, “shows that he’s really a nerd. It’s a good thing to have an economics nerd president of a country.”

“What can Americans learn from Argentina?”

“Keep America prosperous. So we never are in the spot of Argentina in the first place. That requires free markets.”

Yes.

Actually, free markets plus rule of law. When people have those things, prosperity happens.

It’s good that once again, a country may try it.

COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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John Stossel

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January 30, 2024
6 Aspects Of A Balanced Person: A Complete Picture of Well-Being
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What are the six aspects of a balanced person? Physical, mental, emotional, social, work/financial, and meaning/spiritual. Learn more about each one and how to improve it!

In life, there isn’t one single area that we need to focus on that is going to magically fix all of our problems.

Instead there are multiple dimensions behind every “good life.” Each dimension requires our attention and each contributes to our overall happiness and well-being.

Here are six aspects of life that come together to create a “balanced person.” By being more aware of these different dimensions in life, we can determine which areas we need to focus on more and work to improve.

The different aspects of a balanced person include: 1) Physical, 2) Mental, 3) Emotional, 4) Social, 5) Work/Financial and 6) Meaning/Spiritual.

If we focus too much on any one area, then we risk neglecting another one. For example, if you become solely focused on just work and money, you may end up spending less time taking care of your physical and mental health, or less quality time with family and friends.

This is a common trap people fall into. They focus all of their energy and effort into one area in life while completely ignoring another. Often they need to reconfigure their core values and priorities before making a meaningful change.

This is why practicing balance in all things is so important.

Each of these areas is one piece of a much larger puzzle, and only when you have all of these areas working together harmoniously can you finally build a complete life that serves all of your needs.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of each aspect of a “balanced person,” along with tips, tools, and practical advice on how you can start improving each one.

While reading ask yourself, “Which aspect do I need to focus on the most right now? What’s one small change I can make to improve that area?”

Now let’s dive in…

1. PHYSICAL WELL-BEING

The “physical” aspect of life is all about taking care of our health, especially exercise, diet, and sleep.

This includes what types of foods and drinks we consume on a daily basis, how often we exercise and keep our bodies moving, personal hygiene and cleanliness, as well as minimizing alcohol, smoking, and other harmful habits to our physical health.

Our body is one of the most precious gifts we have – and without it we can’t exist. If we don’t stay healthy, we often can’t fully enjoy all the other aspects of life such as family, work, traveling, or leisure.

Our health can often have a spillover effect into all the other aspects of our lives – for that reason, taking care of our physical health is often an essential first step on any road to self-improvement.

No matter what the current state of our health is, it’s never too late to start changing our habits, even if it’s something small like stretching in the morning, taking daily walks outside, or starting an active hobby like Yoga, marathon running, or playing sports.

A healthy body is a healthy mind. When we take better care of our bodies, we also feel more confident, motivated, and energized overall. That’s the beginning of bringing out your best self.

Things to do:
- Identify small ways to be more physically active. Often our days are filled with opportunities to be more active, we just need to take advantage of them. Try to cultivate an “everything counts” mindset when it comes to exercise, even if it just means taking a walk around the block, or stretching in the morning, or doing push-ups before lunch. Any physical activity is better than none at all – so seek out small and convenient ways to keep your body moving throughout the day. If you find yourself sitting for long periods of time, get up and do chores, take a walk around the office, or make a phone call while standing up. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest risk factors when it comes to poor health, so finding any reason to stand up more is better than sitting.
- Find exercise that “clicks” with you and your personality. Different things work for different people. Some people need to commit themselves to a gym membership to get themselves off the couch, while others prefer to work out in the comfort of their own homes. Your personality shapes what exercise you like, so it’s important you find activities that resonate and “click” with you, rather than trying to force yourself to do something you really don’t enjoy. All you need is that one hobby to take your fitness to the next level, whether it be finding an enjoyable sport (like Tennis, or Baseball, or Basketball), or even exercising through video games (such as Wii Fit or Dance Dance Revolution). Try to think of physical activities you enjoyed as a kid, that can often be a good place to rekindle motivation.
- Keep a healthy and consistent sleep schedule. Sleep is one of the most important habits when it comes to your overall physical and mental health. Research shows that those who don’t get sufficient sleep (between 6-10 hours every night) often suffer worse health outcomes like a weaker immune system, higher risk of obesity, lower energy and stamina, and more stress and anxiety. If your sleep habits aren’t healthy or consistent, it will likely have a negative “ripple effect” on almost every other aspect of your day. When you’re tired and fatigued, you’re more likely to make mistakes at work or argue with your spouse. It’s important not only to get between 6-10 hours of sleep each night, but also to maintain a consistent schedule. If you don’t sleep much on the weekends, it’s difficult to “catch up” on those lost hours throughout the week. Try to go to bed and wake up around the same time each day if possible. Here are more important lessons behind a good night’s sleep, including recognizing that some people are natural “early birds” or “night owls,” and that’s something you need to recognize and work with.
- Pay attention to your food and diet. There are many different diets out there to choose from – and people can have long debates about which one is better – but the most important thing is to not eat too much, especially junk food, fast food, soda, sweets, and lots of processed food. Use your commonsense. Experiment with different diet changes and see what works best for you. Different diets work better for different people – so there’s no “one size fits all” solution to what exactly you should eat or not eat. One simple diet change is to substitute all your soda/juice/sugary drinks with water instead. Drinking plenty of water is never a bad place to start – most people don’t recognize how dehydrated they can be throughout the day and how it effects them. If you’re trying to lose weight, one popular option you can consider is intermittent fasting where you allow yourself to eat for an 8 hour window each day and fast for the remaining 16 hours. You can also try the “One Meal A Day” approach, where you restrict yourself to just one big meal (with minimal snacking). In general, pay attention to how your body responds to the things you eat: What foods leave you tired and feeling like crap? What foods make you energized and feeling good?
- Take care of personal hygiene and cleanliness. Proper hygiene is another important aspect of physical health. While it can seem like commonsense, basic habits like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, getting a haircut, trimming your nails, and washing your face are are all important things not to neglect. Not only does cleanliness prevent you from catching germs and getting sick, you also feel better about yourself when you present yourself in the best way possible (and smell good). Often we are surprised by how much better we feel after a fresh new haircut, or clean new clothes, or new cologne/perfume. When mental health is low, we sometimes neglect these basic habits out of laziness or apathy, which is why they are a crucial first step in self-improvement if we aren’t paying enough attention to them.
- Minimize your bad habits. No one is 100% perfect and we all have a couple bad habits, whether it be eating too many sweets, or drinking alcohol, or staying up late, or smoking cigarettes. In general, it’s important to quit (or minimize) our unhealthy habits as much as possible. “Choose your crutches wisely.” Keep in mind the long-term consequences of your habits – while it may not feel like they are hurting you right now, their effects can often catch up to you in the future. When trying to quit any bad habit, identify your triggers and work from there to change to change your patterns. Often by creating more boundaries between you and your bad habits, you can overcome your urge to do them (until it’s no longer an automatic habit anymore). If you find that you have a serious problem with addiction or drug abuse, consider professional help (such as a therapist, psychologist, or counselor) – there are often local resources available in your area if you do a quick search.
Please don’t underestimate the importance of keeping your body in the best shape possible. As Socrates famously said, “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

Physical health is about much more than just looking and feeling good about yourself – it’s about living a life of vitality and longevity. You can have everything else in your life figured out, but if you don’t maintain your health you won’t be around very long to use or enjoy it.

2. MENTAL WELL-BEING

If you don’t take care of your body then it will slowly deteriorate – and the same is true for your mind.

Just because you don’t have to go to school anymore doesn’t mean you can’t keep learning new things, keeping your brain sharp, and challenging your intellect.

Reading books. Learning about new topics. Having deep conversations. Attending lectures and workshops. Following the news. These are all commonsense ways to keep our minds active and continue to update our knowledge and belief system as we move through life.

Learning is a lifelong endeavor. Balanced people are always seeking new things to dig into and learn more about like a new hobby, new game, or new skill such as painting, chess, learning a new language, or playing a musical instrument.

In addition, research shows that continuing to challenge our brain is an important way to prevent cognitive decline as we get older, including lower the risk of dementia and memory loss.

Things to do:
- Read more books. Reading is one of the best ways to keep your mind sharp and learn new things. Nonfiction books about science, history, philosophy, or self help can grow your knowledge and broaden your perspective on life; and reading fiction has been shown to have many cognitive benefits such as boosting empathy, creative thinking, and expanding your vocabulary. If you haven’t read a book in awhile, try to make it a goal to read at least one book this year. You can start with a book you already own but never got a chance to read, or ask a friend for a book recommendation, or get a card from your local library and explore countless books for free. Find a topic or subject that interests you and start there!
- Learn a new skill. Learning multiple skills is a hallmark of being a balanced and well-rounded person. It’s never too late in life to dive into something completely new, such as playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, writing poetry, painting, or playing chess. A jack of all trades mindset can make you stand-out from others in unique ways. Many people have a talent or passion for at least one thing, but when you start combining talents and cultivating multiple interests it shows your range and flexibility as a person. Don’t limit yourself. There’s no pressure to become a “professional” or “expert” in everything you do, just stay on a learning path, have fun while doing it, and enjoy seeing the growth as you go.
- Watch documentaries. Documentaries are a fun and easy way to explore new topics and learn about interesting things you otherwise wouldn’t experience. Depending on what you like, there are many different subjects to choose from: history, sports, biographies, science, inspirational stories, or nature documentaries (which have also been shown to boost positive emotions like joy, gratitude, and awe). I’ve made a lengthy list of recommended documentaries which I try to keep updated as I discover new ones. Check it out and choose one that catches your eye!
- Monitor your information diet. Our current world is overloaded with information, including a lot that is wrong, misleading, or straight up lies and propaganda. Now more than ever we need to pay close attention to the information we consume on a daily basis. Try to find trustworthy news and educational sites where you can easily verify what they are saying from other sources. Beware of going down esoteric “rabbit holes” where people only confirm their own biases and beliefs. Actively seek out information from multiple sides so you’re at least aware of different perspectives and counter-arguments. The information pyramid is a great guide on how you should prioritize certain sources over others. In general, a peer-reviewed scientific study should be given more weight than some random influencer on social media. Keep in mind it’s also possible to consume too much and become an information junkie, where you’re addicted to learning new things, but you never act on it or put it into practice.
Take your education seriously. Maintain a healthy and active brain. Even if you were never a good student in school, that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your knowledge and intelligence, especially once you find subjects you are deeply passionate about. Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

3. EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING

In the “Mental” section we covered how to keep our brains active and be more intelligent thinkers, but there’s also a whole other side of our psychology that we need to pay attention to as well: our “Emotional” side.

Emotions can often seem like something that we have limited power over, but being a more emotionally intelligent person means becoming more self-aware and learning how to better respond to our emotions in the moment.

We can’t ignore our emotions or push them aside forever, they are a necessary facet of life and we must learn to navigate our emotional world effectively if we want to live the best life possible.

Remember that emotions are a resource, not a crutch. Every emotion serves a function or purpose, and if we channel our emotions in a constructive direction we can make great things happen.

One important lesson is that even negative emotions like sadness, anger, guilt, or fear are helpful to a better life if we approach them from the right perspective.

Things to do:

Learn the basics of emotional intelligence. There are 4 fundamental pillars of emotional intelligence that we need to cultivate: 1) Self-awareness (recognizing our emotions when they happen), 2) Self-regulation (knowing how to respond to our emotions and channel them in a positive direction, 3) Empathy (being aware of other people’s emotions and internal states), and 4) Social Skills (knowing how to respond to other people’s emotions in a healthy and constructive way). Certain people may be strong at some of these and not for others. For example, someone may be really empathetic and caring, but not know how to regulate their own mood and emotions, leading to burnout and emotional fatigue. An emotionally intelligent person must work on all four of these pillars.

Improve body awareness. All emotions have a physical component to them. When you learn how to identify the physical sensations behind each emotion, you’ll be much more attuned to your feelings in the moment as you’re experiencing them. This helps you to be more aware of your feelings before acting on them, and to recognize how emotions often want to push or pull you in a certain direction (“do this” vs. “don’t do that”). Every feeling serves a different function depending on its emotional valence (“positive” vs. “negative”) and arousal level (“high energy” vs. “low energy”). With practice, this improved body awareness can also boost your intuition, making you a better reader of your “gut feelings” and what they are telling you.

Learn to channel negative emotions. Negative emotions can serve a positive function if you know how to respond to them in a constructive way. If you struggle with any specific negative emotion (sadness, fear, guilt, or anger), then create a plan for how you will respond to it the next time it arises. For example, “If I’m angry, then I’ll go exercise,” or “If I’m sad, then I’ll write in my journal.” Emotions are energy that can be channeled in multiple directions. Write a list of the many ways you can respond to any negative emotion. Remind yourself you have a choice, and you don’t have to keep following the same pattern between negative emotion → negative behavior. One popular technique is opposite action, where you intentionally do the opposite of what a feeling is telling you to do (to reverse the cycle of negativity).

Practice meditation and daily mindfulness. Meditation is a great avenue for better understanding and regulating your emotions. It teaches you how to step back and just observe your thoughts and feelings without needing to immediately react to them. This space between “feelings” and “actions” is crucial for being a more emotionally intelligent person; it’s the main principle behind discipline, willpower, and self-control. Never forget that just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean you need to act on it. If you’re completely new to meditation, start with the 100 breaths meditation – a simple exercise where you just focus on your breathing. It’s also helpful to learn grounding techniques for when you feel overwhelmed, such as mindful stretching or a 5 senses meditation.

Embrace creative expression. It’s difficult to describe many emotions with only words so it’s important to embrace other ways of expressing yourself, such as through music, photography, dance, painting, drawing, acting, or film. Often when I meet people who don’t feel fully connected to their emotional self, they usually lack ways of expressing themselves through art and creativity. A creative outlet is often a prerequisite to better understanding and navigating your emotional world, even if you don’t typically think of yourself as a “creative person.”

Savor all of your positive experiences. Life is filled with many joys and pleasures throughout the day and we should try to savor them as much as possible. We have many positive emotions to choose from – joy, gratitude, peace, awe, excitement, laughter, and wonder – and there are a variety of activities that can lead to more positive emodiversity in our lives. Don’t just chase after the same positive experiences over and over again, seek new experiences, new hobbies, and new ways of enjoying life. Learn how to savor happiness as much as possible by being more present in the moment, creating positive memories, and reminiscing on good times.

Relax and manage daily stress. Last but not least, it’s necessary we cover stress management as an essential component to mental health and emotional intelligence. Stress is a normal part of everyday life, but if you don’t know how to manage it in a healthy way it can often have a negative influence on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by making you more sensitive, irritable, angry, and bothered (even by little things that don’t really matter). Recognize when to push yourself vs. when to step back and recharge. In the complete guide on daily stress, you’ll find a great framework for reframing your “fight, flight, or freeze” response by viewing stress as a signal to pay attention to and guide you throughout the day. Don’t underestimate the importance of your comfort zone and use it as a place to recharge after a challenging or overwhelming day.

Emotions can “make us” or “break us” depending on how emotionally intelligent we are. They are a fundamental part of life, but we often have more power over them than we realize. Learn how to channel your emotions in a healthy and constructive way – become a master of them, not a slave to them.

4. SOCIAL WELL-BEING

Healthy and positive relationships are an essential ingredient to happiness and well-being.

No matter who you are, you crave some type of social connection; even the most introverted person on the planet will have a tough time finding happiness all by themselves.

There used to be a time when I believed “I don’t need people to be happy, all I need is myself.” But over the years I’ve learned more and more that having social support and a sense of belonging is a basic human need that can’t be avoided.

How strong is your current social circle? Here’s advice to get you started.

Things to do:

Stay connected with friends and family. You should try your best to stay in touch with people who you already have a strong relationship with, especially family and old friends. There’s a simple power in checking in on people and preserving social connections you’ve already established. It doesn’t take much time or effort to show you’re thinking about someone: a simple text, email, or phone call is all you need to let people know you still care and value your relationship with them. You’d be surprised by how much other people appreciate you reaching out to them, even if you haven’t spoken to them in a really long time.

Embrace small social interactions. Every time you leave your home, there is opportunity for social interaction. To build your social muscles, embrace the power of 10 second relationships, such as saying “Hi,” to a neighbor or coworker, small talk with a cashier or cab driver, or sparking up a quick conversation while waiting for the train or bus. Research shows even super tiny social interactions can boost positive emotions and feelings of social connectedness. This can also be a great exercise for people who are very introverted (or have a lot of social anxiety) and want to start being a more social person. Make a plan to have a pleasant interaction with at least one new person every day.

Learn how to have endless conversations. One big concern for people when it comes to meeting new people is, “What do I say? What if I run out of things to talk about?” One popular technique known as conversation threading provides an excellent framework so that you never run out of topics to talk about. The basic idea is that every sentence contains multiple “threads” we can go down, and often the art of good conversation is being able to 1) Listen to what people say, and 2) Choose a thread to talk more about. Rinse and repeat and a conversation can go on forever. Also consider improvisation exercises so that you can be a faster and more creative thinker in the moment.

Improve communication and conflict resolution. It’s a cliché, but communication is everything in relationships. If you don’t know how to express your thoughts and feelings in an honest and constructive way, you’ll have trouble building genuine and healthy connections with others at home, work, or wherever you need to cooperate and work together with people. In romantic relationships, it’s important to know how to communicate your feelings without manipulating or being dramatic. In family and work environments, it’s important to know how to defuse heated arguments before they spiral out of control. The truth is people can be difficult and you’re not going to like everyone’s company. That’s natural. Conflicts have the potential to arise in any social situation, because people have different beliefs, values, and personalities that may be incompatible with each other. What’s most important is to teach yourself the best methods for conflict resolution so you can better navigate the complexities of your social world.

Find opportunities to meet new people. Most people make friends through work or school. Once we get older, it can become more difficult to find new connections or become a part of new social circles. Recent research shows that most adults claim to have “less than 5 close friends.” If you’re looking to expand your circle, there are many opportunities available to you. Depending on your likes, hobbies, and interests, consider going out more to music shows, bars, coffee shops, workshops, church/religious services, bowling leagues, adult education classes, sports events, or book clubs. Seek out local groups in your area or volunteer somewhere. You can also take advantage of websites like Meet Up to connect with like-minded people who live close-by. All it takes is one new friend to introduce you to an entirely new social circle. Be patient and don’t worry if you don’t initially hit it off with the first couple people you meet. Finding the right relationships that fit into our lives can take time.

Use social media and the internet to connect. The internet can be a great place to connect with like-minded people who we’d never meet in the real world. Online communities on social media, message boards, or video games can often provide a valuable source of social interaction, especially for people who don’t have many “real life” friends. The internet can be particularly helpful for connecting with others who have rare or eccentric hobbies, such as fans of a specific author, athlete, music genre, or comic book franchise. Unfortunately, many online communities can also become negative, competitive, and toxic (see the online disinhibition effect), so it’s necessary you build a positive digital environment that works for you. That doesn’t mean hiding in your own “echo chamber,” but it does mean cultivating a feed and followers who ultimately add value to your life and don’t subtract it. First focus on topics you’re naturally interested in such as science, technology, sports, or movies. Try not to be a passive consumer of information, actively enter conversations by asking questions or sharing knowledge with others. Often times we can build meaningful connections with people online that are just as important as those we find in the real world. However, while online relationships can have many benefits, we shouldn’t see them as a substitute for real world “face to face” interactions.

Always remember that quality of relationships > quantity of relationships.

You don’t need to be super popular or the life of the party to have a healthy social life. All you need is a couple really close friends who support you, trust you, and enjoy your presence. That’s everything you need to be socially satisfied.

Healthy relationships are a fundamental aspect of happiness and well-being for everyone. Our need to belong to a “tribe” or group is hardwired into our brain, biology, and evolution. Like every other aspect of a balanced person, it can’t be ignored.

Are your daily social needs being fulfilled?

5. WORK / FINANCIAL WELL-BEING

Another fundamental aspect of a balanced person is work, money, and material concerns.

At the most basic level, we depend on food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and other necessities so we can live a healthy and dignified life.

People that struggle to make a living can often hurt in many other areas: physical health (can’t afford good foods, healthcare, or medicine), relationships (can’t support family, no money for dating), as well as our mental and emotional well-being (stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem).

Unless you win the lottery or have someone else to provide for you, finding a steady job or career is often one of the most focused on areas in life. From childhood up until we finish high school or college, we are constantly asked, “What do you want to do for a living?”

A few people find jobs they love, many find jobs they like, and most find jobs they can at least tolerate. Balancing psychological needs with financial needs can be a difficult task depending on your current situation.

While we don’t always get a choice in what we do for a living, there are important ways to give ourselves more power over our work life and financial life. Here are important guidelines to keep in mind.

Things to do:

Focus on your strengths. Everyone has a place in this world where they add value. Before you decide what type of work you’d like to do for a living, it’s important to know what your natural strengths, skills, and talents are. If you’re friendly and good with people, you may excel at managing, customer service, or human resources type jobs. If you’re more introverted and creative, you may want to focus on writing, graphic design, computer programming, or freelance work. What type of activities are you typically good at (or at least above average)? What were your best subjects in school? What do you enjoy doing and why? Complete the strengths worksheet to discover more about your natural skillset. Ultimately, knowing your strengths will influence what types of jobs or career choices will suit you best – including where you contribute the most value.

Value education and experience. No matter what your job is, there are always new ways to learn and improve. The best workers in life are those who are always growing and mastering their craft. College is still an important part of education, but what’s even more important is to stay self-motivated and continue learning after school. Many people I know have landed successful jobs that had virtually nothing to do with what they studied in college. In several cases, they were people who taught themselves coding/programming, built a portfolio to show their work to potential employers, and climbed their way up the company ladder from there. All self-taught. You can also consider going to trade schools, workshops, mentorships, internships, and other forms of gaining knowledge and experience that are outside of the traditional college model. Any work experience is better than none at all – you just need to start somewhere and begin building yourself up.

Make the most of your job. While it’s rare for any of us to get our “dream job,” we can always make the most of our work life by being a good employee and doing our best. Use nudges to keep yourself motivated and productive throughout the day, learn mental strategies for getting things done that you normally “don’t like” doing, and make friends at work with bosses, coworkers, clients, or customers, because those are the people you’re going to be spending a lot of time with and it’s crucial you have healthy and functioning relationships with them. No matter what your job is try to see the underlying purpose or meaning behind it. What value does it add to the world? Are you proud of the work you do?

Live within your means. Regardless of how much money you make, one of the most commonsense rules for financial well-being is living within your means. This includes keeping a budget that you can maintain (for food, rent/mortgage, bills, gas, clothes, and leisure expenses), and not buying too much stuff you can’t immediately afford. Debt can be common at some point in our lives (due to student loans, credit card debt, medical emergencies, etc.), but try to be mindful to not put yourself in a hole that you can’t climb out of. Avoid luxury expenses that put you at financial risk. We sometimes over-extend ourselves due to social comparison and a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality. We think if our friend or neighbor gets a brand new car or goes on an expensive trip, then we need to “one-up” them with a similar purchase. Many times people fall into massive debt because they are trying to chase status, fame, luxury, or exorbitant pleasures. In general, keep track of all your monthly expenses and find ways to cut back on spending that isn’t necessary. Learn about spending biases that can lead to overconsumption (like the allure of “FREE!,” the “Relativity Trap,” and “One Click” purchases). Big corporations are masters of psychology and persuasion. If we aren’t vigilant about our spending habits (especially if you enjoy retail therapy), then we’ll often fall for tricks that cause us to spend more money than we should.

Create a healthy relationship with material things. This article is about being a balanced person. Work and money are very important aspects of life, but materialistic beliefs can also backfire to hurt us. No one lays down on their deathbed wishing they spent more time in the office. Work-a-holics can end up focusing so much on their career that they neglect giving enough attention to their family, health, and well-being. Never forget that there is a lot more to a good life than just money and material things, despite what you may see glamorized in movies, TV shows, or commercials. Psychology research shows that after a certain point, increased wealth and income has very little effect on our overall happiness and life satisfaction. Being rich sounds awesome, but it won’t necessarily make you any happier than if you earned less with a stable and secure life. Take the materialism quiz to see if you have a healthy relationship with money and stuff.

Remember, money is important but it isn’t everything.

Financial well-being will often look radically different depending on the person. Certain people may be content with modest and minimal living, while others crave more luxury, adventure, and pleasure. Whichever lifestyle you choose, it’s necessary that money finds the proper role in your life without being completely consumed by it.

One succinct way to define true financial well-being is “not needing to think about money all the time.”

6. MEANINGFUL / SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING

The meaningful or spiritual aspects of life can often be overlooked.

We may occasionally ask ourselves big questions like, “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” or “What’s my purpose?” but we rarely translate these questions into our daily lives through action.

For many people, religion is their main source of spirituality and meaning. Attending church, being part of a local community, prayer, and volunteering or giving to charities are common ways people boost meaning in their daily lives. Religion has been shown to improve happiness and well-being by creating a strong sense of purpose and community.

However, we don’t need religion to have a meaningful life. There are many other sources of meaning, including art, culture, philosophy, literature, music, relationships, activism, introspection, and creativity.

Where do you get your meaning in life?

Things to do:

Learn the pillars of a meaningful life. One excellent guide on how to live a meaningful life outlines five different pillars to focus on, including 1) A sense of belonging (having healthy relationships with those around you), 2) A sense of purpose (feeling that you contribute to a larger whole), 3) Storytelling (the life story we tell about ourselves, as well as stories and myths about the world we live in), 4) Transcendence (experiencing “awe” and “inspiration” in the presence of great things), 5) Growth (having a sense that you are evolving and moving forward as a person). All five pillars contribute to a rich and meaningful existence.

Spend more time in nature. Nature reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves, a whole process known as “life.” Nature is a fantastic source of meaning because it continuously inspires positive emotions like joy, amazement, gratitude, and awe. The best part is that nature is all around us – we don’t need to plan a weekend camping trip to experience it – instead just pay attention to everyday nature that is all around you: trees on the drive to work, birdwatching in your backyard, or spending time in your garden over the summer. Having pets to care for is another easy and wonderful source of nature and connection, even if it’s just a small fish tank to maintain. Nature also includes enjoying the beauty of a nice view such as sunrises, sunsets, mountaintops, storm watching, and star-gazing.

Take a complete picture perspective. Finding meaning requires being able to look at things from a big picture perspective. What influence do your actions have in the long-term? What type of impact will you leave on the world after you die? When you keep the complete picture in mind, you recognize that even super small actions can add up and have big results in the future. Your life doesn’t begin at birth nor end at death, you are part of an intergenerational chain of cause-and-effect that has stretched thousands of years. That’s a powerful thought if you can see the true significance behind it.

Embrace art, music, and culture. Artists are the creators of new meanings, especially famous painters, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, authors, playwrights, and dancers. Pursuing a creative hobby of your own is one fantastic way to infuse new meaning into your life. You can also embrace art and culture more by going to museums, art galleries, music concerts, and theaters. A lot of beautiful art is archived in online art and cultural exhibits, so you can discover a lot of new inspiration by just sitting in the comfort of your own home. Artists of all forms teach us how universal the human condition is. It’s a huge inspirational boost when you realize a book written over a hundred years ago resonates exactly with how you feel today. One of my strongest memories is attending a music concert of my favorite band with thousands of others listening and singing along. Creativity is one of humanity’s greatest gifts and there’s a lot of wisdom, beauty, and feelings of universal connection it can offer us.

Signs, symbols, and synchronicity. A meaningful life can be more about feeling inspiration and empowerment rather than thinking only logically and factually about the world. Embrace things you can’t always explain. If you feel like you’re getting a “sign” from the universe, accept it. Our minds often think unconsciously through the power of symbols, especially through reoccurring dreams or nightmares that may be trying to tell you something important. Meaning can be created anywhere if you have the right perspective. Many of my favorite moments in life are when I experience synchronicity, which is finding a connection between two things that seem completely unrelated at first. For example, if I start reading a book and then someone brings up the same book randomly the next day, I try to see that as a sign that I’m on the right path. It may or may not be true, but it is a simple and easy way to add more meaning to the little things in life.

Have faith that life is good. Faith may not have any role in science, but it does play an important role in good living. At the end of the day, one of the most important beliefs we can have is that “life is good” and things will generally work out in the end. One of my personal favorite quotes is, “Pray to God, but row to shore.” It shows us to have hope and faith in life, but still take action and try our best in the moment. Both faith and action are necessary ingredients to a happy and fulfilling life. A belief in God or a higher power can make this whole process easier. However, even if you can’t bring yourself to accept “metaphysical” or “supernatural” ideas, at least try to sense the oneness and interconnectedness of all things. These ideas are an endless source of power, strength, and resilience, even in the face of incredible hardships and tribulations.

A “meaningful life” can be one of the most difficult areas of life to improve, especially while living in a world that is filled with nihilism, hedonism, and materialism.

However, once you build a strong spiritual core you can withstand almost any difficulty or hardship. It can empower you to a whole new level that non-spiritual people don’t usually have access to.

CONCLUSION

To sum things up we must invest time and energy in all six of these aspects if we want to live a happy and balanced life.

Once again, these six aspects of a balanced life include: 1) Physical, 2) Mental, 3) Emotional, 4) Social, 5) Work/Financial, and 6) Meaningful/Spiritual.

Which area are you the strongest in? Which area are you the weakest in?

Keep this framework in mind as you embark on a lifetime of self-improvement. Try the Daily Routine (PDF) exercise and use this resource as a guideline.

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Steven Handel

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January 29, 2024
History Memes for a quick lesson in hilarity (32 Photos)

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Stephen

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January 20, 2024
Study reveals high social mobility in China’s Tang dynasty.

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Newswise — In studying social mobility in today’s industrialized nations, researchers typically rely on data from the World Economic Forum or, in the United States, the General Social Survey. But examining the same phenomena from past centuries is a more daunting task because relevant statistics are harder to come by.

However, a social science research team has now discovered a way to examine professional advancement in medieval China (618-907 CE) by drawing from the tomb epitaphs during the Tang Dynasty. These epitaphs contain the ancestral lineages, names, and office titles (e.g., Minister of Personnel, Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, and Palace Deputy Imperial Censor) of the deceased’s father and grandfather as well as the deceased’s career history and educational credentials—ample data points for measuring social mobility across generations.

Notably, their analysis shows that education during this period was a catalyst for social mobility.

“Epitaphs written in medieval China, including the Tang Dynasty, tend to be highly detailed descriptions of an individual’s life with stylized prose and poems, and they contain granular information about the ancestral origins, family background, and career history of each deceased individual,” says Fangqi Wen, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University.

“This information, to some extent, mirrors what would have been included in a contemporary social mobility survey,” adds Erik H. Wang, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Politics.

Wang studies historical political economy while Wen examines social mobility in contemporary societies. After recognizing the high level of data quality embedded in these epitaphs, they realized that the artifacts were a vessel that merged their scholarly interests. Later they recruited the NYU professor of sociology Michael Hout, Wen’s dissertation advisor and a leading scholar on social stratification and mobility, to join the project.

Their findings, which appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the patterns of relationships of social origins, education, and adult achievement somewhat resemble the patterns in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. In drawing from 3,640 epitaphs of males as well as other data from reliable historical sources, such as dynastic records and third-party compiled genealogies, the researchers’ analysis revealed a decline of Chinese medieval aristocracy and the rise of meritocracy 1300 years ago.

The researchers discovered a specific reason for this development: whether or not the deceased passed the Keju, or the Imperial Exam, which was developed during this period for the purposes of selecting officials for civil service posts. They found that the Keju, which was administered until the early 20th century, served as a catalyst for social mobility—much as higher education has done in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

“Our statistical analysis shows that coming from a prominent ancient great house or ‘branch’

mattered less for career success in the bureaucratic system after roughly 650 CE while passing the Keju came to matter more,” the authors write. “Furthermore, passing the competitive exam may have even equalized chances of subsequent success, as a father’s status was not a factor in the bureaucratic rank of men who passed the Keju.”

“Education is central to our understanding of intergenerational mobility,” observes Hout. “Many think it was a 20th-century development. But, as we can see from centuries-old data, there are phenomena linking origin, education, and careers very much like contemporary patterns.”

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New York University

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January 19, 2024
Africans discovered fossils first

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Newswise — Credit for discovering the first dinosaur bones usually goes to British gentlemen for their finds between the 17th and 19th centuries in England. Robert Plot, an English natural history scholar, was the first of these to describe a dinosaur bone, in his 1676 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire. Over the next two centuries dinosaur palaeontology would be dominated by numerous British natural scientists.

But our study shows that the history of palaeontology can be traced back much further into the past. We present evidence that the first dinosaur bone may have been discovered in Africa as early as 500 years before Plot’s.

We’re a team of scientists who study fossils in South Africa. Peering through the published and unpublished archaeological, historical and palaeontological literature, we discovered that there has been interest in fossils in Africa for as long as there have been people on the continent.

This is not a surprise. Humankind originated in Africa: Homo sapiens has existed for at least 300,000 years. And the continent has a great diversity of rock outcrops, such as the Kem Kem beds in Morocco, the Fayum depression in Egypt, the Rift Valley in east Africa and the Karoo in southern Africa, containing fossils that have always been accessible to our ancestors.

So it wasn’t just likely that African people discovered fossils first. It was inevitable.

More often than not, the first dinosaur fossils supposedly discovered by scientists were actually brought to their attention by local guides. Examples are the discovery of the gigantic dinosaurs Jobaria by the Tuaregs in Niger and Giraffatitan by the Mwera in Tanzania.

Our paper reviews what’s known about African indigenous knowledge of fossils. We list fossils that appear to have long been known at various African sites, and discuss how they might have been used and interpreted by African communities before the science of palaeontology came to be.

Bolahla rock shelter in Lesotho

One of the highlights of our paper is the archaeological site of Bolahla, a Later Stone Age rock shelter in Lesotho. Various dating techniques indicate that the site was occupied by the Khoesan and Basotho people from the 12th to 18th centuries (1100 to 1700 AD). The shelter itself is surrounded by hills made of consolidated sediments that were deposited under a harsh Sahara-like desert some 180 million to 200 million years ago, when the first dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

This part of Lesotho is particularly well known for delivering the species Massospondylus carinatus, a 4 to 6 metre, long-necked and small-headed dinosaur. Fossilised bones of Massospondylus are abundant in the area and were already so when the site was occupied by people in the Middle Ages.

In 1990, archaeologists working at Bolahla discovered that a finger bone of Massospondylus, a fossil phalanx, had been transported to the cave. There are no fossil skeletons sticking out the walls of the cave, so the only chance that this phalanx ended up there was that someone in the distant past picked it up and carried it to the cave. Perhaps this person did so out of simple curiosity, or to turn it into a pendant or toy, or to use it for traditional healing rituals.

After heavy rains, it is not unusual that the people in the area discover the bones of extinct species that have been washed out of their mother-rock. They usually identify them as belonging to a dragon-like monster that devours people or even whole houses. In Lesotho, the Basotho call the monster “Kholumolumo”, while in South Africa’s bordering Eastern Cape province, the Xhosa refer to it as “Amagongqongqo”.

The exact date when the phalanx was collected and transported is unfortunately lost to time. Given the current knowledge, it could have been at any time of occupation of the shelter from the 12th to 18th centuries. This leaves open the possibility that this dinosaur bone could have been collected up to 500 years prior to Robert Plot’s find.

Early knowledge of extinct creatures

Most people knew about fossils well before the scientific era, for as far back as collective societal memories can go. In Algeria, for example, people referred to some dinosaur footprints as belonging to the legendary “Roc bird”. In North America, cave paintings depicting dinosaur footprints were painted by the Anasazi people between AD 1000 and 1200. Indigenous Australians identified dinosaur footprints as belonging to a legendary “Emu-man”. To the south, the notorious conquistador Hernan Cortes was given the fossil femur of a Mastodon by the Aztecs in 1519. In Asia, Hindu people refer to ammonites (coiled fossil-sea-shells) as “Shaligrams” and have been worshipping them for more than 2,000 years.

Claiming credit

The fact that people in Africa have long known about fossils is evident from folklore and the archaeological record, but we still have much to learn about it. For instance, unlike the people in Europe, the Americas and Asia, indigenous African palaeontologists seem to have seldom used fossils for traditional medicine. We are still unsure whether this is a genuinely unique cultural trait shared by most African cultures or if it is due to our admittedly still incomplete knowledge.

Also, some rather prominent fossil sites, such as the Moroccan Kem Kem beds and South African Unesco Cradle of Humankind caves, have still not provided robust evidence for indigenous knowledge. This is unfortunate, as fossil-related traditions could help bridge the gap between local communities and palaeontologists, which in turn could contribute preserving important heritage sites.

By exploring indigenous palaeontology in Africa, our team is putting together pieces of a forgotten past that gives credit back to local communities. We hope it will inspire a new generation of local palaeoscientists to walk in the footsteps of these first African fossil hunters.

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University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

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January 12, 2024
Are microschools the future of education?

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Key points:

This article originally appeared on the Christensen Institute’s blog and is reposted here with permission.

Microschools have become a hot topic over the last few years. Their big appeal is that they promise to do a better job catering to students’ and families’ individual needs and interests. But right now, they only serve about 2 percent to 4 percent of U.S. students. So, could microschools eventually become the new normal in schooling?

Well, let’s see what innovation theory has to say about this question. To start, we first need to take a quick dive into the history of the steel industry (and yes, and I promise it relates).

From the mid 1800s until the 1960s, steel came from massive integrated mills. These large mills did everything from reacting iron ore, coke, and limestone in blast furnaces to rolling finished products at the other end. It would cost over $12 billion to build a huge, new integrated mill today.

Then in the 1960s, a new type of steel mill called the minimill entered the scene. Unlike their giant predecessors that needed large blast furnaces to process raw ore, minimills made new steel products by melting scrap steel using a new technology called the electric arc furnace.

These minimills transformed the economics of steel production. Whereas an integrated mill today might cover two to four square miles and would cost around $12 billion to build, minimills are less than a tenth the size of an integrated mill and only cost around $800 million.

But early minimills had a problem. Because the scrap steel they recycled varied in its chemical makeup, they could only make certain steel products like rebar.

But from the 1960s to the 1990s, as the technology improved, minimills were gradually able to produce more and more of the products made in larger and more expensive integrated mills. First angle iron, then structural steel for buildings, then finally sheet steel for things like soup cans and cars

What does this have to do with microschools?

Microschools are small, independent schooling programs. They often have students of mixed age groups and one or two educators who facilitate the learning experiences.

Just as minimills operate at a smaller scale compared to integrated mills, microschools are much smaller than conventional schools. They typically only serve around 15 to 40 students—much smaller than the typical school with hundreds to thousands of students.

As with minimills, the physical facilities of most microschools are also small and lean. Whereas most conventional schools have large, expensive campuses with multiple buildings, playgrounds, and athletic fields, microschools often operate out of homes, churches, retail space, or office buildings, and use nearby public parks for their outdoor facilities.

Also, just as minimills keep their costs down by recycling scrap steel, microschools take advantage of community and online resources to keep their costs lean.

Whether microschools become mainstream alternatives to conventional schooling remains to be seen.

Just like minimills had to improve their technology over time to offer a wider array of steel products, microschools will have to evolve if they hope to serve a wider array of students and families.

Today’s microschools aren’t for everyone. They’re limited in their ability to provide diverse social interactions, extracurricular activities, and specialized support for unique educational needs, making them an unproven and un-enticing option for many families.

So what’s the takeaway? Microschools may someday disrupt conventional schooling just like minimills disrupted integrated mills. They definitely have some of the key ingredients. But we’ll have to wait and see whether they can evolve to become compelling alternatives to conventional schooling.

Thomas Arnett, Senior Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute

Thomas Arnett is a senior research fellow for the Clayton Christensen Institute. His work focuses on using the Theory of Disruptive Innovation to study innovative instructional models and their potential to scale student-centered learning in K–12 education. He also studies demand for innovative resources and practices across the K–12 education system using the Jobs to Be Done Theory.

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Thomas Arnett, Senior Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute

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January 11, 2024
Germany’s far-right AfD is soaring. Can a ban stop it?

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BERLIN — As the far-right Alternative for Germany continues to rise — and its radicalism becomes increasingly pronounced — a growing chorus of mainstream politicians is asking whether the best way to stop the party is to try to ban it.

The debate kicked off in earnest after Saskia Esken, the co-chief of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD), came out earlier this month in favor of discussing a ban — if only, as she put it, to “shake voters” out of their complacency.

Since then, politicians from across the political spectrum have weighed in on whether a legal effort to ban Alternative for Germany (AfD), while possible under German law, would be tactically smart — or only further fuel the party’s rise.

Like so much of German politics, the conversation is colored by the country’s Nazi past. In a society mindful that Adolf Hitler initially gained strength at the ballot box, with the Nazis winning a plurality of votes in federal elections before seizing power, a growing number of political leaders, particularly on the left, view a prohibition of the AfD — a party they view as a dire threat to Germany’s democracy — as an imperative rooted in historical experience.

Others fear the attempt would backfire by allowing the AfD to depict their mainstream opponents as undermining the democratic will of the German people, desperate to ban a party they can’t beat.

Indeed, the AfD appears to be trying to turn the debate to its tactical advantage.

“Calls for the AfD to be banned are completely absurd and expose the anti-democratic attitude of those making these demands,” said Alice Weidel, co-leader of the party, in a written statement to POLITICO. “The repeated calls for a ban show that the other parties have long since run out of substantive arguments against our political proposals.”

The debate is assuming greater urgency in a key year in which the AfD appears set to do better than ever in June’s European Parliament election as well as in three state elections in eastern Germany in September. The party is currently in second place with 23 percent support in national polls; across all the states of the former East Germany, not including Berlin, the AfD is currently leading in polls.

Calls for a party ban grew louder this week following revelations that AfD members attended a secretive meeting of right-wing extremists where a “master plan” for deporting millions of people, including migrants and “unassimilated citizens,” was discussed. The news sent shockwaves across the country, with many drawing parallels to similar plans made by the Nazis. One of the people reportedly in attendance was Roland Hartwig, a former parliamentarian and now a close personal aide to Weidel, the party’s co-leader.

In a post on X, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz suggested it was a matter for the German judiciary.

“Learning from history is not just lip service,” he said. “Democrats must stand together.”

Many of the AfD’s most extreme leaders operate in eastern Germany, where the party is also the most popular. In two of the three states where the AfD will be competing in state elections next year — Thuringia and Saxony — state-level intelligence authorities have labeled local party branches as “secured extremist” — a designation that strengthens legal arguments for a ban.

Saskia Esken of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) called for a ban on the AfD party to ‘shake’ up complacent voters | Michele Tantussi/Getty Images

Germany’s constitution allows for bans of parties that “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order” — essentially allowing the state to use anti-democratic means to prevent an authoritarian party from corroding democracy from within.

In reality, the legal hurdle for imposing a ban is very high. Germany’s constitutional court has only done it twice: The Socialist Reich Party, an heir to the Nazi party, was banned in 1952, while the Communist Party of Germany was prohibited in 1956.

More recently, in 2017, the court ruled that a neo-Nazi party known as the National Democratic Party (NPD), while meeting the ideological criteria for a prohibition, was too fringe to ban, as it lacked popular support and therefore the power to endanger German democracy.

Given the AfD’s poll numbers, however, an effort to ban it would pose an entirely different dilemma: How would politicians handle the backlash from the party’s many supporters?

Germany’s postwar democracy has arguably never faced a greater test, and politicians — as well as the public — remain divided over how to respond.

Center-right conservatives, who are leading in national polls, tend to view a ban attempt unfavorably.

“Such sham debates are grist to the AfD’s mill,” Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, told the Münchner Merkur newspaper. In response to Esken, the SPD leader who favors exploring a ban, Merz added: “Does the SPD chairwoman seriously believe that you can simply ban a party that reaches 30 percent in the polls? That’s a frightening suppression of reality.”

For the SPD, the stakes in terms of their political survival are much higher. The party has experienced a sharp decline in its popularity, and in two states in Germany’s east it is dangerously close to falling below the 5 percent hurdle needed to win seats in state parliaments.

Even within the SPD — a party whose history of resistance to the Nazis is a source of great internal pride — there is sharp disagreement over whether a ban is a good idea.

“If we ban a party that we don’t like, but which is still leading in the polls, it will lead to even greater solidarity with it,” Carsten Schneider, a social democrat who serves as federal commissioner for eastern Germany, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “And even from people who are not AfD sympathizers or voters, the collateral damage would be very high.”

Peter Wilke contributed reporting

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James Angelos

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January 10, 2024
Taiwan’s new president: 5 things you need to know about William Lai

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TAIPEI — Forget Xi Jinping or Joe Biden for a second. Meet Taiwan’s next President William Lai, upon whom the fate of U.S.-China relations — and global security over the coming few years — is now thrust.

The 64-year-old, currently Taiwan’s vice president, has led the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to a historic third term in power, a first for any party since Taiwan became a democracy in 1996.

For now, the capital of Taipei feels as calm as ever. For Lai, though, the sense of victory will soon be overshadowed by a looming, extended period of uncertainty over Beijing’s next move. Taiwan’s Communist neighbor has laid bare its disapproval of Lai, whom Beijing considers the poster boy of the Taiwanese independence movement.

All eyes are now on how the Chinese leader — who less than two weeks ago warned Taiwan to face up to the “historical inevitability” of being absorbed into his Communist nation — will address the other inevitable conclusion: That the Taiwanese public have cast yet another “no” vote on Beijing.

1. Beijing doesn’t like him — at all

China has repeatedly lambasted Lai, suggesting that he will be the one bringing war to the island.

As recently as last Thursday, Beijing was trying to talk Taiwanese voters out of electing its nemesis-in-chief into the Baroque-style Presidential Office in Taipei.

“Cross-Strait relations have taken a turn for the worse in the past eight years, from peaceful development to tense confrontation,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Chen Binhua said, adding that Lai would now be trying to follow an “evil path” toward “military tension and war.”

While Beijing has never been a fan of the DPP, which views China as fundamentally against Taiwan’s interests , the personal disgust for Lai is also remarkable.

Part of that stems from a 2017 remark, in which Lai called himself a “worker for Taiwanese independence,” which has been repeatedly cited by Beijing as proof of his secessionist beliefs.

Without naming names, Chinese President Xi harshly criticized those promoting Taiwan independence in a speech in 2021.

Without naming names, Chinese President Xi harshly criticized those promoting Taiwan independence | Mark Schiefelbein-Pool/Getty Images

“Secession aimed at Taiwan independence is the greatest obstacle to national reunification and a grave danger to national rejuvenation,” Xi said. “Those who forget their heritage, betray their motherland, and seek to split the country will come to no good end, and will be disdained by the people and sentenced by the court of history.”

2. All eyes are on the next 4 months

Instability is expected to be on the rise over the next four months, until Lai is formally inaugurated on May 20.

No one knows how bad this could get, but Taiwanese officials and foreign diplomats say they don’t expect the situation to be as tense as the aftermath of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in 2022.

Already, days before the election, China sent several spy balloons to monitor Taiwan, according to the Taiwanese defense ministry. On the trade front, China was also stepping up the pressure, announcing a possible move to reintroduce tariffs on some Taiwanese products. Cases of disinformation and electoral manipulation have also been unveiled by Taiwanese authorities.

Those developments, combined, constitute what Taipei calls hybrid warfare — which now risks further escalation given Beijing’s displeasure with the new president.

No one knows how bad this could get, but Taiwanese officials and foreign diplomats say they don’t expect the situation to be as tense as the aftermath of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in 2022 | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

3. Lai has to tame his independent instinct

In a way, he has already.

Speaking at the international press conference last week, Lai said he had no plan to declare independence if elected to the presidency.

DPP insiders say they expect Lai to stick to outgoing Tsai Ing-wen’s approach, without saying things that could be interpreted as unilaterally changing the status quo.

They also point to the fact that Lai chose as vice-presidential pick Bi-khim Hsiao, a close confidante with Tsai and former de facto ambassador to Washington. Hsiao has developed close links with the Biden administration, and will play a key role as a bridge between Lai and the U.S.

4. Taiwan will follow international approach

The U.S., Japan and Europe are expected to take precedence in Lai’s diplomatic outreach, while relations with China will continue to be negative.

Throughout election rallies across the island, the DPP candidate repeatedly highlighted the Tsai government’s efforts at diversifying away from the trade reliance on China, shifting the focus to the three like-minded allies.

Lai has to tame his independent instinct | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

Southeast Asia has been another top destination for these readjusted trade flows, DPP has said.

According to Taiwanese authorities, Taiwan’s exports to China and Hong Kong last year dropped 18.1 percent compared to 2022, the biggest decrease since they started recording this set of statistics in 1982.

In contrast, Taiwanese exports to the U.S. and Europe rose by 1.6 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively, with the trade volumes reaching all-time highs.

However, critics point out that China continues to be Taiwan’s biggest trading partner, with many Taiwanese businesspeople living and working in the mainland.

5. Lai might face an uncooperative parliament

While vote counting continues, there’s a high chance Lai will be dealing with a divided parliament, the Legislative Yuan.

Before the election, the Kuomintang (KMT) party vowed to form a majority with Taiwan People’s Party in the Yuan, thereby rendering Lai’s administration effectively a minority government.

While that could pose further difficulties for Lai to roll out policies provocative to Beijing, a parliament in opposition also might be a problem when it comes to Taiwan’s much-needed defense spending.

“A divided parliament is very bad news for defense. KMT has proven that they can block defense spending, and the TPP will also try to provide what they call oversight, and make things much more difficult,” said Syaru Shirley Lin, who chairs the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation, a Taipei-based policy think tank.

“Although all three parties said they wanted to boost defense, days leading up to the election … I don’t think that really tells you what’s going to happen in the legislature,” Lin added. “There’s going to be a lot of policy trading.”

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January 10, 2024
PolitiFact – A primer on Civil War history and what Donald Trump and Nikki Haley got wrong

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William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” That could describe some of the recent historical discourse on the presidential campaign trail.

First came Republican candidate Nikki Haley, who answered a question at a Dec. 27 event in Berlin, New Hampshire, about the Civil War’s cause. Haley’s answer didn’t refer to slavery, and instead cited “the role of government and what the rights of the people are.” (She later said that “of course the Civil War was about slavery.”)

Then, in Newton, Iowa, on Jan. 6, former President Donald Trump said the Civil War “could have been negotiated” rather than causing years of bloodshed.

Students and scholars of American history might be tempted to ask the presidential candidates to take a refresher course.

“Whatever individual people fought for can become complicated, but there’s no doubt that the Confederacy was founded on the basis of protecting enslavement,” said William Alan Blair, a Penn State University historian and author of “Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South.”

With the Civil War’s history and framing becoming a recurrent theme in the days before crucial presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, we thought we’d clarify the causes and run-up to the pivotal conflict that raged from 1861 to 1864.

Historians agree that slavery was at the center of the Civil War

Saying the Civil War centered on slavery doesn’t mean that slavery was the war’s only cause. On some level, it was also a “clash of a traditional society,” the South, and “a modernizing society,” the North, said Michael Burlingame, a historian at the University of Illinois, Springfield and author of “Abraham Lincoln: A Life.”

But slavery was the “central cause,” Burlingame added.

The notion that differences over states rights caused the war, historians say, is inseparable from the reason that states rights became a sticking point: slavery.

“Whenever I hear politicians dodging the slavery question, often by saying the American Civil War was not about slavery but was about state’s rights, I finish their sentences by adding, ‘to the tradition of owning Black people,” said Marvin Dunn, an emeritus psychology professor at Florida International University and author of “The History of Florida: Through Black Eyes.”

Paul Finkelman, a visiting professor at Marquette Law School and author of “Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, agreed with Dunn.

“If you go through the checklist to find something else that caused the war, it can’t be taxes, tariffs, or some other public policy issue,” he said. “It’s all about slavery.”

One need not take historians’ words on this question. Primary documents from the 19th century centered slavery as states were seceding from the union:

State declarations of secession: South Carolina’s declaration of secession, issued Dec. 24, 1860, uses a variation of the word “slave” 18 times, including mention of “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery” as being at the root of their secession.

Mississippi’s declaration of secession of Jan. 9, 1861, said, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.”

And Texas’ secession ordinance, issued Feb. 1, 1861, said that “recent developments in federal affairs make it evident that the power of the federal government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression.”

Not all of the secession documents described slavery this way, “but in those that don’t, it is clearly implied,” said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University historian and author of “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.”

The “corner-stone” speech: On March 21, 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens presented slavery as one of the reasons behind the “revolution” that produced the Civil War.

The Confederacy’s constitution, Stephens said, “has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the (N)egro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”

He added that the Confederacy’s “corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the (N)egro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”

The Confederacy’s constitution: The Confederate constitution was explicit about mentioning slavery.

According to the Confederate constitution, “the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.” It further demanded that fugitives from slavery be returned rather than protected, and it said that in any future geographical expansion of Confederate territory, slavery “shall be recognized and protected.”

Negotiation to avoid a civil war had been tried before

“There was extensive, decades-long negotiation,” said Martin P. Johnson, a historian at Miami University, Hamilton in Ohio and author of “Writing the Gettysburg Address.”

It started with the discussions at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the framers, despite the reservations about slavery among some of them, let the importation of enslaved people to continue until 1808; required the return of fugitives from slavery; and counted an enslaved person as three-fifths of a free person for the purpose of congressional representation. The framers made these compromises because they were concerned that, without them, the southern states would reject the document.

Negotiations later produced the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.

As late as December 1860, just weeks after Lincoln’s election and a few months before hostilities broke out at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Sen. John Crittenden of Kentucky offered the “Crittenden Compromise,” which would have extended to the Pacific Ocean the line originally drawn by the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel but allowing it below that line. It died in committee.

The war’s start “was not a failure of negotiation or process,” Johnson said. “It was about a fundamental difference of outlook, ideology, and understanding of the American experiment. Are we a nation founded in assuring the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all? Or a compact to guarantee property only, specifically property in humans?”

Approving the Crittenden Compromise would have amounted to “a capitulation to pro-slavery principles and would have required Lincoln and the Republicans to abandon their bedrock commitment to the nonextension of slavery,” said Georgetown University historian Adam Rothman, author of “Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South.”

Eventually, the 1860 election decided the issue in Lincoln and the Republicans’ favor. But by then, neither side had the stomach for compromise.

The South “refused to negotiate coming back into the Union,” Finkelman said.

As for the North, abandoning “halting the extension of slavery into the territories was a non-starter as far as Lincoln was concerned,” Wilentz said.

In other words, historians say, the sides were at an impasse.

Black academics said they feel it viscerally when they see politicians mischaracterizing the Civil War’s history and origins.

“The lie about the history of slavery and the Civil War … revolves around the disposability of African Americans as human beings,” added Carol Anderson, an Emory University African American Studies professor.

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January 9, 2024
Some mosquitoes like it hot

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Newswise — Certain populations of mosquitoes are more heat tolerant and better equipped to survive heat waves than others, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

This is bad news in a world where vector-borne diseases are an increasingly global health concern. Most models that scientists use to estimate vector-borne disease risk currently assume that mosquito heat tolerances do not vary. As a result, these models may underestimate mosquitoes’ ability to spread diseases in a warming world.

Researchers led by Katie M. Westby, a senior scientist at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station, conducted a new study that measured the critical thermal maximum (CTmax), an organism’s upper thermal tolerance limit, of eight populations of the globally invasive tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The tiger mosquito is a known vector for many viruses including West Nile, chikungunya and dengue.

“We found significant differences across populations for both adults and larvae, and these differences were more pronounced for adults,” Westby said. The new study is published Jan. 8 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Westby’s team sampled mosquitoes from eight different populations spanning four climate zones across the eastern United States, including mosquitoes from locations in New Orleans; St. Augustine, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Stillwater, Okla.; St. Louis; Urbana, Ill.; College Park, Md.; and Allegheny County, Pa.

The scientists collected eggs in the wild and raised larvae from the different geographic locations to adult stages in the lab, tending the mosquito populations separately as they continued to breed and grow. The scientists then used adults and larvae from subsequent generations of these captive-raised mosquitoes in trials to determine CTmax values, ramping up air and water temperatures at a rate of 1 degree Celsius per minute using established research protocols.

The team then tested the relationship between climatic variables measured near each population source and the CTmax of adults and larvae. The scientists found significant differences among the mosquito populations.

The differences did not appear to follow a simple latitudinal or temperature-dependent pattern, but there were some important trends. Mosquito populations from locations with higher precipitation had higher CTmax values. Overall, the results reveal that mean and maximum seasonal temperatures, relative humidity and annual precipitation may all be important climatic factors in determining CTmax.

“Larvae had significantly higher thermal limits than adults, and this likely results from different selection pressures for terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae,” said Benjamin Orlinick, first author of the paper and a former undergraduate research fellow at Tyson Research Center. “It appears that adult Ae. albopictus are experiencing temperatures closer to their CTmax than larvae, possibly explaining why there are more differences among adult populations.”

“The overall trend is for increased heat tolerance with increasing precipitation,” Westby said. “It could be that wetter climates allow mosquitoes to endure hotter temperatures due to decreases in desiccation, as humidity and temperature are known to interact and influence mosquito survival.”

Little is known about how different vector populations, like those of this kind of mosquito, are adapted to their local climate, nor the potential for vectors to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. This study is one of the few to consider the upper limits of survivability in high temperatures — akin to heat waves — as opposed to the limits imposed by cold winters.

“Standing genetic variation in heat tolerance is necessary for organisms to adapt to higher temperatures,” Westby said. “That’s why it was important for us to experimentally determine if this mosquito exhibits variation before we can begin to test how, or if, it will adapt to a warmer world.”

Future research in the lab aims to determine the upper limits that mosquitoes will seek out hosts for blood meals in the field, where they spend the hottest parts of the day when temperatures get above those thresholds, and if they are already adapting to higher temperatures. “Determining this is key to understanding how climate change will impact disease transmission in the real world,” Westby said. “Mosquitoes in the wild experience fluctuating daily temperatures and humidity that we cannot fully replicate in the lab.”

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Washington University in St. Louis

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January 7, 2024
Did ‘Salt Lake City’ Just Drop the Greatest Finale in Bravo History?

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Today on this special episode of Morally Corrupt, our Bravo avengers assemble to discuss what might have been one of the greatest finales in Housewives history—The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4, Episode 16. Rachel Lindsay, Jodi Walker, and Chelsea Stark-Jones give their initial reactions to this epic episode, debate the morality of having a secret finsta dedicated to taking down Jen Shah, break down the social media drama that followed, and more!

Host: Rachel Lindsay
Guests: Jodi Walker and Chelsea Stark-Jones
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

Subscribe: Spotify

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Rachel Lindsay

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January 5, 2024
History Podcasts for the New Year

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Want to start the new year by listening to a history podcast? Here are some suggestions.

Rather than providing links to Spotify or Apple, I’ll just supply the information so that you can find the podcast anywhere you choose; not all of these podcasts are available on every player. My player of choice is Podcast Republic, which I found for free in the Google Play store.

Just as the Beatles weren’t the first rock and roll band, but they did inspire the formation of many other bands, the modern founding father of history podcasts is Mike Duncan, with The History of Rome. The more than 180 episodes start with the founding of Rome and conclude with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Duncan then followed up Revolutions, examining in depth ten influential revolutions: the British Civil Wars of the mid-17th century in 16 episodes, the American Revolution in 15, the French Revolution in 54, the Haitian Revolution in 19, the Bolivarian revolutions of northern South America in 27, the mid-19th century European revolutions in 49 (divided into three separate units), Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in 27, and Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution in 103. (Numbers are based on numbered episodes. Each of these podcasts has several supplemental episodes.)

While keeping up a prodigious output of weekly episodes, Duncan wrote two books. The first is The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, covering 146-78 BC. As Duncan explains, the Roman Republic self-destructed because politicians and their supporters, of diverse ideological views, all started tearing down the unwritten traditions that had made republican self-government possible and had kept political battles within reasonable bounds. While Duncan doesn’t make the point explicitly, the parallels to modern American politics are ominous. Duncan’s other book is Hero of Two Worlds, a biography of the audacious Marquis de Lafayette.

David Crowther’s The History of England is delightfully wry. Beginning with the primordial history after the collapse of Roman rule, the podcast is presently in the middle of the British Civil Wars in 1642. For any history podcast, I recommend starting at the beginning and working your way forward, just like when you discovered the existence of The Gilmore Girls in 2021.

History of the Germans, by Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, is well-named since “Germany” as a political unit long postdates the German people. Beginning in the late Dark Ages, the series has covered the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, the numerous Italian intrigues of HRE emperors trying to maintain their power there, and the rise and fall (ca. 1500) of the merchants’ Hanseatic League, based in Germany’s northern ports. Then, the podcast took a step back in time, to tell the story of Germany’s eastern front—including the wars with the Slavs and the rise of Prussia. At the moment, in episode 131, we are in the mid-13th century.

The Russian Rulers History Podcast, by Mark Schauss, began with Rurik and continued all the way to Putin. That chronology being completed, Schauss now podcasts on special topics from all over Russian history and culture.

Eric Halsey’s The Bulgarian History Podcast may seem obscure to American listeners. The podcast is an excellent starting point for learning Balkan history. Having begun with the long-age invasion of the Bulgar tribe from Central Asia, the series is now up to the Second Balkan War on the eve of World War I, in episode 198. Most listeners will be surprised to learn that there were two Bulgarian Empires, which controlled much of the Balkans, long before the emergence of the modern Bulgarian nation in the late 19th century.

Along the way, Bulgarian History necessarily looks in depth at the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, particularly their policies and wars in the Balkans. You’ll learn about Albania’s greatest national hero, Skanderbeg (1405-68) who successfully led Albanian resistance to the Ottomans for 22 years, until he succumbed to malaria.

A podcast preceding the Mike Duncan era is 12 Byzantine Rulers, by Lars Brownsworth. The 17 episodes are a fine starting point for the basics of Byzantine history.

Brownsworth followed up with Norman Centuries. Educated American listeners will have at least a little familiarity with the Anglo-French Normans who conquered England in 1066. But as Brownsworth describes in 20 episodes, the Normans ranged far and wide, conquering Sicily and Southern Italy, and becoming a major power in the Mediterranean,

The History of Egypt, by Dominic Perry, begins in prehistory and takes the listener through the litany of pharaohs. With over 200 episodes, we’re still not up to 1,000 BC. Perry also provides information about the lives of ordinary Egyptians, to the extent information is available. The podcast is steeped in archeology, and Perry provides many side episodes on interesting archeological sites, the history of Egyptian archeology, and interviews with modern scholars.

The Ancient World, by Scott C., aims to cover a vast array of material. The initial episodes were chronological, and bounced from one location to another. Since then, the podcast has focused on one particular topic, and followed it from start to finish. Currently, the podcast is nearing the end of Carchemish (C Episodes), about the Neo-Hittite kingdoms of Assyria (today, eastern Syria and western Iraq). Other series are Rediscovery (R Episodes), about archeologists and explorers who led the rediscovery of the ancient world; Bloodline (B Episodes), a ten-generation history of the descendants of Mark Antony and Cleopatra; and Thea (T Episodes), about the Seleucid Empire, a successor state that ruled some of the territory conquered by Alexander the Great.

As the series titles indicate, the main focus of The Ancient World is the Near East, an area about which we have far more surviving written information from ancient times than we do about most other parts of the world.

A common feature of all the above excellent podcasts is that they are mainly apolitical and nondidactic. The podcasters let the events and individuals speak for themselves. This sets them apart from some other history podcasts whose underlying theme is convincing listeners to become leftists.

While the above podcasters sometimes express their own views, the expression is rarely intrusive or designed to make some point about modern politics.

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David Kopel

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December 29, 2023
Trump wouldn't be the first non-Confederate barred from office by the 14th Amendment

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Last week’s ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to hold federal office under the terms of the 14th Amendment is a nearly unprecedented situation.

Nearly.

Per Section 3 of that constitutional amendment, passed in the wake of the Civil War, former elected officials guilty of having engaged “in insurrection or rebellion against” the federal government are forbidden from holding office. It is obviously a provision meant to keep former Confederates from returning to Congress after the war, but the Colorado Supreme Court has determined that Trump’s role in instigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol meets the vague standards outlined set forth in the amendment. On Thursday, Maine Secretary of State Shanna Bellows announced that Trump would be removed from the state’s primary ballot because he is ineligible for office under the terms outlined in the 14th Amendment.

Since the end of Reconstruction, Trump is just the second person ruled ineligible for federal office due to that provision.

The first: Victor Berger, who is perhaps slightly more well known for being the first Socialist elected to Congress.

Berger was born in Austria and immigrated to the United States as a young man. In 1910, he won a seat in Congress representing Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and served a single two-year term. After being defeated in 1912, Berger remained active in left-wing politics and opposed America’s entry into the First World War. In 1918, he was convicted (along with several other Socialist organizers) of having violated the Espionage Act of 1917, which effectively criminalized any criticism of the war effort.

Officially, Berger was found guilty of 26 “disloyal acts” related to a series of editorials published by the Milwaukee Leader, a paper Berger helped run, arguing against America’s involvement in the war.

Despite that conviction—or perhaps because of it—Berger was elected to Congress again in 1918. His campaign called for the country to respect free speech and freedom of the press, and he continued to push for an “early, general, lasting and democratic peace.” (Naturally, he also campaigned for a variety of typically terrible Socialist ideas too, like the nationalization of industries.)

Here’s where Section 3 of the 14th Amendment popped up. Congress refused to seat Berger when he showed up to work in January 1919, on the grounds that his Espionage Act conviction was tantamount to engaging in insurrection against the country. The vote was nearly unanimous, 311-1, with the lone dissenting vote cast by a Wisconsin Republican.

A special election was held in December 1919 to fill the still-vacant seat, and Berger won again—this time earning even more votes than he had a year earlier. Again, a majority in Congress voted to block Berger from taking his seat.

There was yet another twist to come, and a final bit of trivia embedded in all this: The federal district judge who had overseen Berger’s Espionage Act trial was Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Baseball fans may recall Landis’ involvement in another (arguably more famous) decision. After leaving the federal bench in 1920, Landis was hired as the first commissioner of Major League Baseball and charged by the teams’ owners with investigating allegations of match-fixing in the 1919 World Series scandal. Though the players involved in the scandal were acquitted in court, Landis exercised his own discretion as commissioner to impose a lifetime ban on eight players—including Chicago White Sox superstar “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

Landis was known for being ill-tempered and prejudiced, particularly against German immigrants. According to a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn Berger’s conviction, Landis once said “If anybody has said anything worse about the Germans than I have, I would like to know it so I can use it.”

During Berger’s trial, Landis was openly hostile. He declared that Germans “are reeking with disloyalty” and condemned all pacifists as having “the interests of the enemy at heart.” After reviewing the case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Landis should have recused himself from the case due to prejudice and threw out Berger’s conviction on the grounds that he did not receive a fair trial.

Vindicated, Berger again ran for Congress in 1922 and won. This time he was seated without controversy, and he subsequently won reelection in 1924 and 1926.

As a precedent for the current situation involving Trump and the 14th Amendment, Berger’s case probably has little value. For one, Berger plainly didn’t engage in an insurrection, and the First Amendment should have prevented any conviction for the supposed crime of writing anti-war editorials or publishing Socialist opinions in a newspaper. What happened to Berger says a lot about the awfulness of the Espionage Act and about how war encourages governments to stomp all over civil liberties. But it doesn’t say much about how the court should view the 14th Amendment, particularly since the Supreme Court never took up that issue in Berger’s case—as it likely will with Trump’s.

Still, there’s one legal angle that Berger’s case demonstrates. Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University, told Milwaukee Magazine earlier this year that Berger’s case shows that a series of post-Civil War amnesty laws did not fully nullify the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause. That will likely be relevant when, or if, the U.S. Supreme Court or other state courts tackle the question of Trump’s eligibility to be president.

Like it was in Berger’s day, the notion that banning certain candidates from office is necessary to protect the country from unpopular ideas seems misguided. And wielding Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against political opponents seems certain to worsen the dangerous “will-to-power” politics infecting both major political parties at the moment.

In any case, as we veer into what’s sure to be one of the most bonkers years in American political history, maybe there’s a small bit of comfort to be gleaned from the knowledge this situation isn’t entirely unprecedented.

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Eric Boehm

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December 29, 2023

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