So the state, along with private partners, spends lots of money and energy promoting science and technology education, seen by many as a necessary part of our future economic aspirations. Then along comes KITV and undercuts the it all by reporting astronomy and astrology as if they were on an equal footing.
At least that’s what I thought on Sunday when KITV reported on that day’s solar eclipse during its prime time evening news (“Astrologers say astral events affect human condition“).
There were so many ways that this could have been reported. Interviews with UH astronomers? An explanation of how an eclipse works with a demonstration at the Bishop Museum planetarium? Coverage of an astronomy club? Maybe a look at how scientists predict when eclipses will occur and where they will be visible? Any of those approaches would have emphasized the science. Instead, from the headline to the interview, science got shorted in favor of the astrology angle that trivialized an interesting astronomical event.
Okay. It was Sunday. Everyone knows they don’t report real news on Sunday. Nonetheless, IMHO, it reflects quite poorly on the state of television news.
And in another bit of media news, it took Talking Points Memo (TMP) to think of asking for the recent communications between the State of Hawaii and Arizona’s nutty Secretary of State (“Emails Show How Hawaii Stiffed Arizona Secretary Of State’s Birther Investigation“).
One of the more amusing things revealed last week when Arizona’s secretary of state came out as birther curious was that Hawaii officials just simply don’t believe he’s qualified to investigate Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
Sure, Ken Bennett says he’s the man in charge of deciding whether President Obama is eligible to be on Arizona’s ballot in November, but the response from people in Hawaii’s government has been: Prove it. In essence, they’re giving Bennett a taste of his own medicine, making him jump through a series of hoops to prove he has the legal authority to investigate the matter, much the same way the birthers have made Hawaii prove time and time again that the president is indeed a natural born citizen of the United States.
On Monday, TPM filed a public records request for the correspondence between the Hawaii government and the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. The results show Bennett and his staff grew ever more impatient with the slow pace of Hawaii’s response before the secretary finally took to a local conservative radio talk show on Thursday to voice his concerns.
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Maybe Jill could just tell Ken that she can’t release the certificate because the stars aren’t in alignment. And while we’re on the politics/astrology kick, shouldn’t we name the proposed rocket center “Spacey Camp”?
Here’s an interesting confluence between astronomy and astrology. Science tells us that the Earth wobbles on its axis like a spinning top, with one complete wobble (precession) every 26,000 years. So that means that every particular date on the calendar would have moved from one zodiac sign to a different zodiac sign after approximately 2200 years; and some dates near the beginning or end of a zodiac sign’s period (the “cusp”) actually move to the adjoining, different zodiac sign after less than one century. Astrology has been using zodiac signs for many centuries, and the Western calendar has been used for many centuries; so it might be that most people now living would have been classified under a different astrological sign if they had been born only a few centuries previously. You might think you’re a Libra when actually you’re a Virgo or Scorpio. Your horoscope is wrong! I wonder what the astrology buffs would say about that! On the other side of the ledger: we all know that Caesar’s astrologer got it right: “Beware the ides of March!” Et tu Brute? And right here in Hawaii, if Kamehameha had not followed the advice of his Kahuna Nui (chief prophet, or astrologer) to build Pu’ukohola Heiau, he could not have “unified” the islands to create the Kingdom.
I am not a “birther” because I do not have any evidence that President Obama’s birth certificate is fake. However, I am also a good enough researcher to know there are reasonable grounds for doubting whether it’s legitimate. I’ll describe some reasons. I think that when someone is running for President, if there are any questions raised regarding his US citizenship, the burden of proof is on him to prove it and the proof should be held to very high standards “beyond a reasonable doubt.” There are some reasonable doubts. The Territory of Hawaii did in fact issue a false but official birth certificate in at least one very high-profile case; Obama was born only a couple years after Statehood when the bureaucracy probably still worked the same way as the Territorial period; foreigners seeking the advantages of US citizenship for political or economic reasons often create “anchor babies” even today; publication of birth notices in the newspapers was probably based on a list of birth certificates (whether true or fake) provided by the state bureaucracy.
It is indisputable that the Territory of Hawaii issued a false but nevertheless legitimate-looking official birth certificate to the famous leader of the Chinese revolution Sun Yat-sen. I have a large webpage about him and his likely views regarding the Hawaiian revolution of 1893 (he was in Hawaii both before and after that event and had close relationships with leaders on both sides), at
http://tinyurl.com/3sdqef3
Here’s a quick summary of elements related to the fake birth certificate. Sun was born in China but grew up in Hawaii and attended Iolani and Punahou. He lived in Hawaii several times as an adult, enlisting supporters and collecting money for the Chinese revolution. He traveled throughout the U.S. mainland doing the same thing. But as a Chinese person not born in the U.S., he would never have been allowed to enter the U.S. mainland due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. So his friends in Hawaii signed sworn but false affidavits that he had been born here, and the Territorial government accepted those affidavits as sufficient basis to issue a birth certificate (thereby making him a U.S. citizen able to travel throughout the U.S. regardless of the Chinese Exclusion Act). The fake birth certificate was an official document which repeatedly fooled U.S. immigration agents. You can see a photo of Sun Yat-sen’s Territory of Hawaii birth certificate, and further information about it, on pp. 39-41 of this booklet “Sun Yat-sen In Hawai’i” by YANSHENG MA LUM AND RAYMOND MUN KONG LUM available in pdf in both Chinese and English. The English version is at
http://www.sunyatsenhawaii.org/images/stories/sunyatsen/PDF/Sun_Yat_sen_English-ss.pdf
Obama was born in Hawaii only a couple years after Statehood, at a time when the state government bureaucracy was probably still following many of the same procedures from the Territorial period, probably including the process for issuing birth certificates based on affidavits rather than hospital records. It was probably quite possible (I don’t know for sure) for any resident of Hawaii to follow the same procedure used by friends of Sun Yat-sen to get a birth certificate. And the address shown on Obama’s birth certificate is not the address where his mother or father were allegedly living when he was born; so they could have been in Africa while their friend filed the paperwork.
We all know there were birth notices in both the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser. But those newspaper listings were probably based on a list of birth certificates issued from the Department of Health; the newspapers then, as now, probably did not independently verify the information they were given by the Department of Health.
Obama’s mom and dad had no way of knowing he would become famous and need a US birth certificate. However, even today we have a lot of foreign pregnant women who come to American soil to give birth to their babies so the babies will be American citizens and later can freely enter the U.S. and then bring their parents into America — the term is “anchor babies” and it’s a big indistry with travel agencies in Korea, and less formally in Mexico and elsewhere. Obama’s Dad was a citizen of Kenya, so his son would not automatically be a U.S. citizen; and if the baby was born in Africa it might be that it would not be recognized as a U.S. citizen despite mom’s U.S. citizenship (I don’t know whether the rules back then required babies born abroad to have both of their parents be U.S. citizens). Both of Obama’s parents were very politically active at the time of his birth, so it’s quite plausible that they would have similar motivation to get a U.S. birth certificate for their baby as the political and economic motivations of the parents of today’s anchor babies.
It’s almost to easy to dismiss questions about the Obama birth certificate as “birther nonsense.” Where’s your investigative curiosity?
Bennett is learning that the lunatic fringe is the same everywhere; give an inch, they’ll take a mile. Now he’s stuck. If he just gives up, he’ll look foolish and weak. And if he keeps going, he’ll look foolish and crazy. Never try to appease the crazies.
Jill Nagamine is my hero!
We’re still wasting time and resources on this? And here I thought the Flat Earth Society no longer existed.
Flat Earth Society merged with Heaven’s Gate and the Rajneeshee to become the mighty tea party.
We used to think deep south had some strange critters holding public office. Either they moved to Arizona or there is something in the water supply there. Gun toting citizens shoot Congress people and federal judges, conduct a private war with a foreign country and generally act as if they are being run by a Banana Republic despot. Arizona comes off more like Somalia than America.
I say send in the Marines and clan it out.
Hugh – You should hear what they say about Hawaii.