‘Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal’

The Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Brown v. Board of Education on this date in 1954.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

FindLaw

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia were effected. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia had mandatory segregation. Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona and Wyoming had laws that permitted segregation, though the law had never been applied in Wyoming.

The Board of Education in the case title is the Topeka, Kansas, board. The decision actually dealt with four cases from Kansas (Topeka), South Carolina (Clarendon County), Virginia (Prince Edward County), and Delaware (New Castle County).

The decision was 9-0.

Only in Utah

From dooce, a link to an usual traffic report.

It’s not like that here in Albuquerque, where our traffic reporter is known as Helen Wheels. No, really. (Say it out loud.)

Thanks to oneken for the link.

Best sports line of the day, so far

“You can’t blame [the NBA] for the Stoudemire-Diaw suspensions because they correctly interpreted a stupid, idiotic, foolish, moronic, brainless, unintelligent, foolhardy, imprudent, thoughtless, obtuse and thickheaded rule.”

Bill Simmons, who adds: “What kind of league penalizes someone for reacting like a good teammate after his franchise player just got decked?”

Follow the link if only to read the Dave Cowens story about two-thirds of the way down.

May 16th is the birthday

Henry Fonda was born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, Nebraska. Seems hard to believe but Fonda was only nominated for an acting Oscar twice — for Grapes of Wrath and On Golden Pond. He won for the latter in 1982, a few months before his death. Particular favorite Fonda films (other than those two): 12 Angry Men, Mister Roberts, My Darling Clementine (he played Wyatt Earp), The Ox-Bow Incident (with sidekick Harry Morgan, aka Col. Sherman Potter) and, maybe best of all, as Clarence Earl Gideon in Gideon’s Trumpet (made when Fonda was 75).

Actress Debra Winger and gymnast Olga Korbut both turn 52 today. Winger has been nominated for the best actress Oscar three times — Shadowlands (1993), Terms of Endearment (1983) and An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). Korbut is the Belarusian gymnast who, pixie-like, revolutionized gymnastics. She became it’s first TV superstar while winning three gold medals and one silver at the 1972 Olympic Games. For a few days she was the talk of the planet.

Elsewhere, Studs Terkel is 95, Rep. John Conyers from Detroit is 78, Pierce Brosnan is 54, Janet Jackson is 41, Gabriela Sabatini is 37 and Tori Spelling is 34.

Woody Herman (1913) and Billy Martin (1928) were born on May 16.

$53.84

NewMexiKen set a new personal best at the gasoline pump today: 16.029 gallons at $3.359 a gallon.

Gasoline is a utility. It costs what it costs, like electricity or cable internet. If it hadn’t been priced so low most of my life — I once paid 179 cents a gallon — we wouldn’t be as upset.

The thing to do, of course, is drive less, turn down the thermostat in the winter and up in the summer, replace incandescent bulbs. I believe it’s a good thing that cost is finally making us conserve.

Best sports line of the day, so far

“[B]ut I think basketball is the purest form of athletic expression. Football is too scripted, baseball’s too boring, and soccer … well, soccer can best be compared to caviar. No one really knows why anyone likes it, but they’re all afraid to say that it looks like poop and tastes like fish eggs.”

Paul Shirley in a discussion of the NBA playoffs with Neal Pollack at Slate. Shirley is the author of Can I Keep My Jersey?: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond.

In parts one and three of this series, Pollack has some strong thoughts on the NBA and the ripoff of the Suns.

Yeah! Texas

The Texas House of Representatives yesterday crafted a compromise measure aimed at eliminating red light cameras in the state. The legislative body adopted a series of amendments to Senate Bill 1119 requiring cities to produce concrete evidence whether the devices reduce accidents or merely are revenue raisers. Unless the legislature is convinced of the latter by September 1, 2009, the cameras would be unplugged.

Texas House Votes to Sunset Red Light Cameras

Oh, yeah, and Nevada:

The Nevada state Senate overwhelmingly rejected red light cameras by a 15-6 vote last month. Nevada is one of a growing number of jurisdictions with a specific statute banning automated photo ticketing.

Nevada Rejects Red Light Cameras

Most important line of the day, so far

“The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law.”

Glenn Greenwald commenting on the real story behing Former Deputy Attorney General Comey’s testimony yesterday.

Even the tepid Washington Post has this:

“James B. Comey, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.”

Lawlessness so shocking.

It’s way beyond Nixon, folks. Way beyond.

Worst president ever.

[YouTube has Comey’s testimony — about 20 minutes.]

Stumbling on Happiness

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert has won the annual Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

Here’s part of what Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, wrote about Gilbert’s book last year.

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future–or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We’re terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that’s so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

The smartest show on televison

“Then I had this crazy dream that my family were all just cartoon characters and that our success led to some crazy propaganda network called Fox News.” –Bart Simpson
. . .

Terribly animated (at least by Pixar or Dreamworks standards), unabashedly crude and, at times, prone to deus ex machina endings (including one featuring a robed, sandaled and bearded God who actually booms, “Deus ex machina!” as he sets things right), The Simpsons will present its 400th episode on Fox on May 20. It’s important to note the “on Fox” part, as there would be no Fox, let alone a Fox News, without The Simpsons.

There’s more at The Simpsons Hit 400.

Best line of the day, so far

“But at the end of the day, I’m not terribly sad, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. Jerry Falwell was a divisive person, a hateful person, and what I’ve tried to be all about, in the Teletubbies days and since then, has been love. I’ve got to keep it that way. I don’t want anybody feeling good about it when it’s my time for Tubby bye-bye.”

Tinky Winky

Atheists with Attitude

From a review in The New Yorker of recent books on the dangers of religion:

And now there is “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” by Christopher Hitchens, which is both the most articulate and the angriest of the lot. Hitchens is a British-born writer who lives in Washington, D.C., and is a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate. He thrives at the lectern, where his powers of rhetoric and recall enable him to entertain an audience, go too far, and almost get away with it. These gifts are amply reflected in “God Is Not Great.”

Hitchens is nothing if not provocative. Creationists are “yokels,” Pascal’s theology is “not far short of sordid,” the reasoning of the Christian writer C. S. Lewis is “so pathetic as to defy description,” Calvin was a “sadist and torturer and killer,” Buddhist sayings are “almost too easy to parody,” most Eastern spiritual discourse is “not even wrong,” Islam is “a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms,” Hanukkah is a “vapid and annoying holiday,” and the psalmist King David was an “unscrupulous bandit.”