That was then, this is now

Via Millard Fillmore's Bathtub:

Look at this photo. It’s a shot of the crowd gathered in St. Louis on October 19 to see and hear Barack Obama — about 100,000 people. Study the buildings in the photo.

Elizabeth Kaeton wrote at Telling Secrets:

If you look in the distance there, you can see a building with a greenish-copper dome. That’s the Old St. Louis Courthouse. For years and years, slaves were auctioned on the steps of that courthouse.

The Old Courthouse used to be called the St. Louis State and Federal Courthouse.

Back in 1850, two escaped slaves named Dred and Harriett Scott had their petition for freedom overturned in a case there. Montgomery Blair took the case to the US Supreme Court on Scott’s behalf and had Chief Justice Roger Taney throw it out because, as he wrote, the Scotts were ‘beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’

Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

Election map

I stumbled across this display of thematic mapping more or less by accident, but it's a nice discussion of how straightforward information doesn't necessarily lead to the clearest understanding.



From Mark Newman, Professor, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at UM.

Snowmobiles in YNP

The latest plan: 318 'biles per day.

Defending faith ...

... by attacking art. Italian museum boss, Corinne Diserens, sacked after leaping to defend a crucified frog.

Pope Benedict XVl took offence while on summer holiday in the mountains near Bolzano, describing the work as blasphemous. The Vatican sent a letter in the Pope’s name to Franz Pahl, the president of the Trentino-Alto Adige regional council (who also opposed the sculpture), saying that it “wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the Cross the symbol of God’s love”.

Tough. We nonbelievers have our sentiments wounded every day and we deal with it.

Spacy papers

Neil Armstrong papers go to - where else? - Purdue University.

The commenter "Deborah" is a hoot.