BBC News - German dialect in Texas is one of a kind, and dying out

These are the roots from which my father-in-law sprang. Youngest speakers are in their 60s, the last generation that grew up with German spoken at home, church, and school. A University of Texas scholar is documenting the dialect while there's still time. The BBC story explains some of the distinctives of the Texas variety of German. You can learn more at the Texas German Dialect Project website.

The Impact of Federal Involvement in America's Classrooms

Andrew J. Coulson's February 10, 2011, testimony to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Includes graphs showing federal per-pupil spending vs. achievement and total K-12 public school spending vs. achievement, 1970-2010.

The Juilliard Effect - Ten Years Later - NYTimes.com

In 2004, the New York Times hunted for the 44 instrumentalists who graduated with the Juilliard Class of 1994. After 10 years, fewer than half of these gifted musicians were making a living performing music.

Google Earth Engine: Landsat Annual Timelapse 1984-2012

This view is centered on Tulsa, but you can look anywhere and watch the process of development and road-building.

American English Dialects

This complex map, accompanied by charts and notes, depicts the geographical extent various dialects of English in North America. The historical notes describe the historical events that drove the migrations that shaped the odd patterns. For example: What historical development may have influenced Oklahoma City's dialect to be different from areas to the north and south?

How Government Killed the Medical Profession - Reason.com

A surgeon explains how the Federal Government's requirement to use standard coding for Medicare reimbursement has led to the bureaucratization of the entire medical profession: "The coding system was supposed to improve the accuracy of adjudicating claims submitted by doctors and hospitals to Medicare, and later to non-Medicare insurance companies. Instead, it gave doctors and hospitals an incentive to find ways of describing procedures and services with the cluster of codes that would yield the biggest payment. Sometimes this required the assistance of consulting firms. A cottage industry of fee-maximizing advisors and seminars bloomed....

"As the third party payment system led health care costs to escalate, the people footing the bill have attempted to rein in costs with yet more command-and-control solutions....

"Twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, protocols and regimentation were imposed on America's physicians through a centralized bureaucracy. Using so-called 'evidence-based medicine,' algorithms and protocols were based on statistically generalized, rather than individualized, outcomes in large population groups....

"What began as guidelines eventually grew into requirements. In order for hospitals to maintain their Medicare certification, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began to require their medical staff to follow these protocols or face financial retribution....

"These rules are being bred into the system. Young doctors and medical students are being trained to follow protocol. To them, command and control is normal. But to older physicians who have lived through the decline of medical culture, this only contributes to our angst."

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Wringing a Wet Towel in Orbit

Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield demonstrates the odd, fascinating result of wringing a wet towel in the microgravity of the International Space Station.

Coding, Fast and Slow: Developers and the Psychology of Overconfidence

"First off, there are, I believe, really two reasons why we're so bad at making estimates. The first is the sort of irreducible one: writing software involves figuring out something in such incredibly precise detail that you can tell a computer how to do it. And the problem is that, hidden in the parts you don't fully understand when you start, there are often these problems that will explode and just utterly screw you.

"And this is genuinely irreducible. If you do "fully understand" something, you've got a library or existing piece of software that does that thing, and you're not writing anything. Otherwise, there is uncertainty, and it will often blow up. And those blow ups can take anywhere from one day to one year to beyond the heat death of the universe to resolve....

"The key is that you first accept that making accurate long-term estimates is fundamentally impossible. Once you've done that, you can tackle a challenge which, though extremely difficult, can be met: how you can your dev team generate a ton of value, even though you can not make meaningful long-term estimates?"

Oklahoma Teacher: October 1921 issue: October Bible Readings

Back in October 1921, on p. 22, the official publication of the Oklahoma Education Association offered a list of daily Bible readings and weekly memory verses.

NYC Municipal Archives Online Gallery

A virtual time machine! See this Daily Mail story for some beautiful examples of photographed urban history from the New York City Municipal Archives.

"Welcome to the New York City Municipal Archives Online Gallery of over 870,000 images. Selected from the world-class historical collections of the Archives, most of these unique photographs, maps, motion picture and audio recordings are being made accessible for the first time. Visitors are invited to explore and search the collections individually, or across all collections by keyword or any of the advanced search criteria. The gallery includes many complete collections; for others, only representative samples are currently on display. Visitors are encouraged to return frequently as new content will be added on a regular basis. Patrons may order reproductions in the form of prints or digital files; most images can be licensed for commercial use. Please see the order page for further details."

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Races for Tulsa Mayor, Tulsa County Commissioner, and Tulsa City Council will all be on the ballot in 2013. Follow BatesLine for the latest on all the candidates and their records. We won't let anyone get away with rewriting history.

Classical Christian education in Tulsa Open houses and informational meetings

Give your kids a strong academic foundation with a Christian education in the classical model. Learn about two great options in Tulsa:

Open houses for Augustine Christian Academy, a traditional K-12 school that also offers a part-time option for homeschoolers.

Informational meetings for Classical Conversations, a homeschooling approach with 10 communities in the Tulsa area.


Complete archive of BatesLine's coverage of Tulsa County's corporate-welfare and pork-barrel tax package, on the ballot this November. Officially on the ballot as County Proposition No. 1 and County Proposition No. 2.


Vote NO on Vision2

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Latest entries on the BatesLine homepage:

We had one fewer gift to buy this Mother's Day, one fewer card to send, one fewer phone call to make. A little more than two months ago, my mother-in-law, Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe, Ed. D., died after a two-year battle with breast cancer at the age of 79. In lieu of...
KTUL has posted video from Wednesday's League of Women Voters debate between incumbent Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr, former Councilor Bill Christiansen, and former Mayor Kathy Taylor. It's not all in one piece and their site is a bit difficult to navigate, so here are direct links to each clip....
An email this morning from attorney Kent Morlan, a downtown property owner and resident who represented his fellow property owners in the fight to overturn the misuse of the city's power to impose an assessment to pay for the new downtown ballpark. The politician behind that misuse was then-Mayor Kathy...
There are reports of extensive fire damage to the Rolling Hills Shopping Center, on Admiral Pl west of 193rd East Ave in far east Tulsa. Assistant Fire Marshal Rick Bruder told reporters that a discount store and a pizza restaurant were likely destroyed as the fire caused their roofs to...
Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr has released his proposed budget for the upcoming 2013-2014 fiscal year, which begins July 1. (That's an 8 GB PDF.) The budget is slightly lower than last year, reflecting the drop in revenues that caught Bartlett Jr and his administration by surprise, leading to...
At some time in the near future, the Oklahoma State Senate may vote on HB1412, a bill that purports to prohibit governmental entities in Oklahoma from implementing any aspect of Agenda 21 or belonging to any United Nations-related organization. After the jump, you can read the full text of the...
Thursday I took the students in my Ancient Greek class at Augustine Christian Academy. We went to Philbrook to see a special exhibit of ancient artifacts -- statues, inscriptions, coins, jewelry, household items, and vessels having something to do with Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love (known to the Romans...
The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash, no fan of Twitter and social media, wrote the equivalent of about 400 tweets on the subject recently, including an account of his visit to this year's SXSW. There's a Tulsa connection: Seth Cohen, director of network initiatives at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family...
Noteworthy news, comment, and reflection: MIT's student newspaper The Tech reports on the memorial service for campus police officer Sean Collier. MIT Police Chief John Difava recounted the events of last Thursday night. He was pulling out of Stata around 9:30 p.m. and saw a cruiser idling, which turned out...
Q1. So, are you going to be writing about Kathy Taylor's threat to sue Bill Christiansen? A1. Yep, and I've already started, but I need a little more time, because I don't want to get a scary lawyer letter from Doug Dodd, Kathy's lawyer. (I don't know what to think...

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