Film footage of Market St., San Francisco, April 1906

The video above shows a fascinating bit of analysis on film footage shot in San Francisco shortly before the April 18, 1906 earthquake and fire devastated the city:

Morley Safer reports on a mystery that was solved about a 100-year-old film that we now know was made on San Francisco's Market Street just days before the 1906 earthquake. (link

This film is another in a series of early films that I've commented upon. Such films are fascinating to me, as are early color photographs such as these.

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Noteworthy website: "Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American City"

This is a fascinating web-based project, showcasing the decline of St. Louis in the twentieth century using interactive visuals and selected documents. The site combines interactive maps, primary source documents, and explanatory text that make this source a valuable graphical representation of racism at work in the United States.

The image above is a screenshot from Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American City. This project accompanies Colin Gordon's book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (PennPress, 2008) and presents an interactive series of four maps that help illustrate key themes of the book. The colored patches on the map above show where race-restrictive covenants, regulations, and real estate ratings of one kind or another existed during the first half of the twentieth century.

Evolution of a video game

Here is an interesting brief historical overview of the development of the Madden NFL video game. I recall playing some of the mid-1990s iterations of this game and having a great time. It looked something like this:

Narration to 1940 silent film "Willamette River Pollution"

I recently received an email query from someone researching Willamette River pollution about the location and content of the narration to William J. Smith's 1940 film "Willamette River Pollution." I blogged about the content of this film here and here, but I haven't yet written anything about the narration. Therefore, below the fold I'll provide my interpretation of the film's narration, by way of providing the substance of my response to that email query.

Also, below this, I've pasted the partial transcription of the narration that I made from a copy with rather poor audio.

Willamette River films & videos

I just stumbled upon a resource providing links to various historical films & video footage of the Willamette River:

City of Portland Office of Healthy Working Rivers, "Our Rivers in Motion: A selection of films and videos about the Willamette and Columbia."

I've yet to click-through the links on this page, but I'm putting it here for my future reference, and yours.

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Hunter Orange

Anne Saker, "In a first, Oregon's Fish and Wildlife Commission considering 'blaze orange' mandate for hunters in 2010," Oregonian Sep. 29, 2010, p. A1, A8.

The prospect of state officials mandating that hunters in Oregon wear "hunter orange" clothing has brought out an example of the kind of libertarian thinking that I find ridiculous:

"What is lost on you folks on the commission and government bureaucrats is that it is none of your damn business what I am wearing when hunting, and what my children are wearing is my decision not yours!" (italics mine, for emphasis)

I find this perspective extremely myopic, for the following reasons: