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In no realm of nature is the principle of cause and effect more conspicuous than in astronomy; and we fall into the habit of thinking of its laws as not only being unchangeable in our universe, but necessary to the conception of any universe that might have been substituted in its place. The first inhabitants of the world were compelled to accommodate their acts to the daily and annual alternations of light and darkness and of heat and cold, as much as to the irregular changes of weather, attacks of disease, and the fortune of war. They soon came to regard the influence of the sun, in connection with light and heat, as a cause. This led to a search for other signs in the heavens. If the appearance of a comet was sometimes noted simultaneously with the death of a great ruler, or an eclipse with a scourge of plague, these might well be looked upon as causes in the same sense that the veering or backing of the wind is regarded as a cause of fine or foul weather.
For these reasons we find that the earnest men of all ages have recorded the occurrence of comets, eclipses, new stars, meteor showers, and remarkable conjunctions of the planets, as well as plagues and famines, floods" and droughts, wars and the deaths of great rulers. Sometimes they thought they could trace connections which might lead them to say that a comet presaged famine, or an eclipse war.
Even if these men were sometimes led to evolve laws of cause and effect which now seem to us absurd, let us be tolerant, and gratefully acknowledge that these astrologers, when they suggested such "working hypotheses," were laying the foundations of observation and deduction. If the ancient Chaldaeans gave to the planetary conjunctions an influence over terrestrial events, let us remember that in our own time people have searched for connection between terrestrial conditions and periods of unusual prevalence of sun spots; while De la Rue, Loewy, and Balfour Stewart' thought they found a connection between sun-spot displays and the planetary positions. Thus we find scientific men, even in our own time, responsible for the belief that storms in the Indian Ocean, the fertility of German vines, famines in India, and high or low Nilefloods in Egypt follow the planetary positions. And, again, the desire to foretell the weather is so laudable that we cannot blame the ancient Greeks for announcing the influence of the moon with as much confidence as it is affirmed in Lord Wolseley's Soldier's Pocket Book. Even if the scientific spirit of observation and deduction (astronomy) has sometimes led to erroneous systems for predicting terrestrial events * Trans. R. S. E., xxiii. 1864, p. 499, On Sun Spots, (astrology), we owe to the old astronomer and astrologer alike the deepest gratitude for their diligence in recording astronomical events. For, out of the scanty records which have survived the destructive acts of fire and flood, of monarchs and mobs, we have found much that has helped to a fuller knowledge of the heavenly motions than was possible without these records. So Hipparchus, about 150 B.C., and Ptolemy a little later, were able to use the observations of Chaldaean astrologers, as well as those of Alexandrian astronomers, and to make some discoveries which have helped the progress of astronomy in all ages. So, also, Mr. Crowell' has examined the marks made on the baked bricks used by the Chaldaeans for recording the eclipses of IoG 2 B.C. and 762 B.c.; and has thereby been enabled, in the last. few years, to correct the lunar tables of Hansen, and to find a more accurate value for the secular acceleration of the moon's longitude and the node of her orbit than any that could be obtained from modern observations made with instruments of the highest precision. So again, Mr. Hind" was enabled to trace back the period during which Halley's comet has been a member of the solar system, and to identify it in the Chinese observations of comets as far back
etc., by B. Stewart. Also Trans. R. S. 1860-70. Also Prof. Ernest Brown, in R. A. S. Monthly Notices, 190o.
Containing record of solar eclipse, 1062 B.c., used lately by Cowell for rendering the lunar theory more accurate than was possible by finest modern observations. (British Museum collection, No. 35908.)
as 12 B.C. Cowell and Cromellin extended the date to 240 B.C. In the same way the comet 1861.i. has been traced back in the Chinese records to 617 A.D." The theoretical views founded on Newton's great law of universal gravitation led to the conclusion that the inclination of the earth's equator to the plane of her orbit (the obliquity of the ecliptic) has been diminishing slowly since prehistoric times; and this fact has been confirmed by Egyptian and Chinese observations on the length of the shadow of a vertical pillar, made thousands of years before the Christian era, in summer and winter. There are other reasons why we must be tolerant of the crude notions of the ancients. The historian, wishing to give credit wherever it may be due, is met by two difficulties. Firstly, only a few records of very ancient astronomy are extant, and the authenticity of many of these is open to doubt. Secondly, it is very difficult to divest ourselves of present knowledge, and to appreciate the originality of thought required to make the first beginnings. With regard to the first point, we are generally dependent upon histories written long after the events. The astronomy of Egyptians, Babylonians, and Assyrians is known to us mainly through the Greek historians, and for infor
* R. S. E. Proc., vol. x., 1880.


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Back in 2011, a few weeks before I left Groundwire (R.I.P.), I was at a nonprofit conference down in southern Oregon. I was delighted to run into Dianne Russell, who runs the Institute from Conservation Leadership. Dianne's been doing organizational capacity building work in the environmental sector for… well, pretty much forever and has always been one of those people I've admired as we worked over the years with many of the same great people and organizations.
So there we were in the lobby, catching up, talking about the weather, our kids, I don't quite remember. But then out of nowhere, Dianne dropped this idea on me:
"I've been thinking lately," she said (and I paraphrase slightly), "that we capacity builders have really screwed up. We've systematically miseducated funders about the true cost of doing the work."
I swear that the clouds parted and a great beam of light shone down on us. (Never mind that we were indoors.) I heard the clap of thunder, but maybe it was just the sound of my jaw hitting the concrete floor.
I picked it up and said, "Oh, wow. You are… totally… right. I never thought of it that way before. How come I never thought of it that way before?"
In an instant, I flashed through all of the ways I'd failed at pricing over 15 years of doing mostly-below-market-rate technology and communications consulting to environmental nonprofits:
- Giving work away for free: FAIL. very few clients truly value what they're not paying for, and a price of "free" makes it really easy to fail to invest in making new tools and knowledge sustainable.
- Charging meaningful but "below-market" rates: FAIL. This is a more subtle way to fail. When you charge a meaningful amount, clients have "skin in the game" and that's good. You have far fewer failing projects. But think back to Econ 101 — if you price below market, demand is infinite, and every unit of below-cost service you deliver is another unit of charitable subsidy you have to raise. So, while each project is great and your clients love you, you are digging a hole to hell with your good intentions.
- Charging "the low end of market rate:" NOT A TOTAL FAIL, BUT DANG HARD. Here, your clients are happy and you're not losing money hand over fist, but you're trapped in the tyranny of the billable hour and the constant struggle to keep staff from being poached by higher-paying for-profits, etc.
But, despite having experienced all of this failure modes, I hadn't really thought about how underpricing affects funders — who, along with the nonprofits themselves, are often "the customer" for capacity building services, even though they are not "the client."
As we tie on our superhero capes and leap into action, we often fail to calculate our true costs. And even more often, we fail to disclose that full cost either to our clients or to our funder/customers. This happens for many reasons, all of them sincere and well-meaning.
We capacity builders, with our zeal to get the work done — after all, there's so much good work that desperately needs doing — we're wizards at cobbling together a few bucks here, a few bucks there. And maybe we feel a little bit guilty about charging all that money to do good work. We've usually got at least a touch of impostor syndrome ("we're not really that good") so we hem and haw and there are a thousand reasons why we just sort of don't get around to really showing everyone who's paying for a piece of our pie just how much the whole pie really costs.
This is all well and good and well intended. The clients are happy, the funders are happy and the capacity builder might even be pretty happy too. But over the not-so-long term, Bad Things Start to Happen:
Even if you've been rigorous about showing all your cross-subsidies, the cumulative effect of underpricing is that it affects what funders (and clients) are willing to pay for future capacity building engagements. This is what my economist friends call "price anchoring." Over time it means that funders (and clients) start to believe that below cost is what it costs and, worse, that's all it's worth. This means that if a future capacity builder should have the temerity to charge enough to cover their full costs (including the cost of paying people competitive salaries, not burning them out with overwork, etc.), they are very likely to be told, "Sorry, that's too expensive. Last time I only paid $BELOW-COST-PRICE."
Let me be clear: it's not that clients and funders are naive or that they are trying to abuse us by setting up a race to the bottom. Prices are signals and prices are stories, and our prices are telling lies that have, over time, systematically miseducated our customers (and our clients) about the underlying economic reality of the work.
The bill for this is coming due.


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Karan Johar is the perfect bachelor for me: Mallika Sherawat
Mumbai: Actress Mallika Sherawat, who is featuring in an upcoming reality dating game show on television, feels film-maker Karan Johar is the "perfect bachelor" in Bollywood.
'The Bachelorette India- Mere Khayalon Ki Mallika' is the Indian version of the American competitive reality dating game show 'The Bachelor.'
The show is likely to go on air in August. It will revolve around the single bachelorette and a pool of romantic interests trying to impress her.
"I think in Bollywood, Karan Johar is a perfect bachelor …He is perfect for me. He is charming, successful and he has integrity," Mallika told reporters at the launch of the show here today.
Though the format reminds of 'Rakhi Ka Swayamwar,' the actress says she has not seen that show.
Mallika, known for her bold on-screen attitude, says people will get to see another side of her through this effort.
"I have been shown as bold and glamorous girl. Through this show, people will get to see my emotional and sensitive side. I think the reach of TV today is limitless, while my reach is limited," she said.
Mallika also said she was looking for a companion, just like any other girl does.
"I am lonely and looking for a companion. I am looking for love. I am like any other girl, who, beyond name, fame, money, wants a companion in life," the 36-year-old added.
The Indian version of the show will have 30 contestants vying for Mallika's attention.


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Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Researching State Legislative Records: The Biggest Obstacle in American Legal History
In this post, I will discuss the sources that do exist for state legislative history in the period circa 1789-1960 and strategies for using these important but challenging sources:
--Journals. Every state legislature kept a journal. This was a skeletal procedural record. It traced the life of each bill in each legislative session: who introduced the bill; to what committee it was referred and whether that committee reported it; whether it was amended, how, and by what vote; and whether it was passed and by what vote. This source can be useful if you want to see which legislators voted for or against which bills. It can also be useful if you want to trace changes in a bill's text (though beware the journal may only include the text of amendments and not of the original bill, for which you'll have to go to the state archives). The journals typically contain no discourse -- no speeches, no debates, and no substantive committee reports. Just bill numbers and roll calls. As to accessibility: Some journals (not all) are on Google Books. A few are on LLMC. A large number were included in a New-Deal-era Library of Congress microfilm project called Records of the States of the United States of America (edited by William Sumner Jenkins and released in 1949-51), the contents of which appear in A Guide to the Microfilm Collection of Early State Records (1950). Complete runs of this microfilm series appear to be rare, though several libraries have locally-relevant chunks of it. LLMC's director recently said he hopes to digitize the whole microfilm series.
--Document Series. States legislatures would sometimes publish series of documents, which might include deliberative records like committee reports. Many states published such series, but usually in a sparse and intermittent way; a few published them more regularly and copiously, though none (from what I have seen) approached the comprehensiveness of the Congressional Serial Set. Many of the series are listed in A Guide to the Microfilm Collection of Early State Records (1950), Class D, though beware that the listed documents are often executive department reports (e.g., of the state auditor), not legislative material proper. And the Guide warns it isn't complete (xviii). I'll say a few words about two big states that seem unusually comprehensive:
--For New York, the series was jointly titled Documents of the Senate of the State of New York and Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, and it ran from 1831 to 1976. The volumes contained committee reports, sometimes on particular bills and sometimes on issues of general concern to the legislature. Various libraries have some or all of the volumes, and some have a complete microfilm set. Many (though not all) of the volumes are now on Google Books, and several from circa 1830-1855 happen to be included in Gale's new database Sabin Americana (which isn't specifically aimed at government documents). You'll want to consult the indexes for the series (referenced here: http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/content/new-york-state-documents-finding-guide).
--For Massachusetts, the series was jointly titled Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Documents Printed by Order of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The series's content and availability seem to be similar to New York's. Indexes can be found at:
--https://archive.org/details/indexguidetomass00blou (covering 1802-1882)
--https://archive.org/details/indextomassachus00adam (covering 1883-1899)
--https://archive.org/details/indexofspecialre00mass(covering 1900-1988)
--Reports of Ad Hoc Bodies. The best information about a state law often appears in the report of some ad-hoc body that the legislature established to propose the law and/or to study the problem with which the law would deal. These bodies might be composed of lawmakers, outsiders, or a combination. Their reports were often published as free-standing pamphlets or books, with titles like Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Expediency of Revising and Amending the Laws Relating to Taxation and Exemption Therefrom (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1875). Many are on Google Books. Beware that such a report may reflect the view of only one faction -- and that the enacted law may have diverged from what the ad hoc body wanted.
--Newspapers. If you can find newspapers from the relevant state that have been digitized for the period of the law's enactment, by all means search them for coverage of any debate. In refining your searches, it can help to consult the legislative journal (the skeletal procedural record discussed above) to pinpoint the dates on which key steps occurred (introduction, amendments, final passage). In the absence of, or in addition to, digitized newspapers, consult secondary sources to identify the leading newspapers of the state and/or state capital. Identify more than one newspaper to get a range of partisan affiliations. Then, guided by the dates gleaned from the legislative journal, consult those newspapers (you may need microforms and interlibrary loan) to find articles covering the debate. Beware that you cannot rely upon headlines. It was common for a newspaper to send a reporter to cover the legislature for the day, for the reporter to pen a single article summarizing debate on numerous bills (devoting one or two paragraphs to each bill), and for the headline of that article to focus solely on the most prominent of those bills. Thus, you need to scan all the headlines to identify every article that covers any legislative activity, and then you need to skim each such article to see if your bill is mentioned. Also skim the editorials, which are often untitled.
--Gubernatorial Messages. In most states, the governor was required to send a message to the legislature each year, which would discuss a laundry list of matters. Often the message would contain discussion of proposals for some later-passed law. Many states published the gubernatorial messages in their legislative journals (on which see above). Some published them ad hoc, as free-standing pamphlets. Many are listed in A Guide to the Microfilm Collection of Early State Records (1950), Class D. In a few states, the gubernatorial messages were compiled retroactively in comprehensive multi-volume sets, e.g., Messages from the Governors [of New York] (edited by Charles Z. Lincoln, covering 1683-1906); Messages of the Governors of Tennessee (edited by Robert H. White et al., covering 1796-1933). Some of these are on Google Books.
--Constitutional Conventions. Constitutional revisions tend to be more frequent and far-reaching at the state level than at the federal level. And state constitutions tend to be longer, and dispose of more issues, than does the federal Constitution. Thus, many states have been through several constitutional conventions, and the deliberations of each convention are normally recorded and published as a free-standing book. They are pretty much all digitized, in Google Books and/or the database "Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources."
--Clues Within the Statute Book: Recitals and Revisers' Notes. In the colonial and early national periods, it was common for legislatures to begin the text of a statute with a recital stating the reasons for its enactment. (This custom was linked to the early pattern whereby legislation often grew out of citizen petitions.) Then, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was common for the legislature, every few decades, to appoint one or more "Revisers" to organize and clean up the state's statutes. Usually this was meant to be a technical exercise, but sometimes the revisers would make policy choices (e.g., if they had to choose which of two inconsistent provisions to delete). The revisers would sometimes explain what they were doing -- in notes to accompany the new code they wrote. Thus, if you look up old state codes (as opposed to session laws), you may find revisers' notes, usually interspersed with individual provisions.
--Colonial Legislative Deliberations. Ironically, colonial legislative deliberations are generally easier to research than pre-1960 state legislative deliberations. The reason is that (a) in the colonial period, some legislatures recorded certain aspects of their proceedings in manuscript, (b) between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, the state governments that inherited these manuscripts published them, often in handsome volumes, and (c) many of those volumes have recently been digitized, particularly in the database "Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources," and sometimes on free state websites, as with Maryland (www.aomol.net). These publications usually contain manuscript records of the colonial government generally (not just the legislature), so legislative material will be interspersed with other stuff (e.g., court records). And the exact nature of the legislative material will vary from colony to colony. It may be next to nothing, or it may be something quite valuable, like substantive minutes of the debates, or the text of substantive messages sent back and forth between the houses of assembly, council, and governor (though I've never seen anything approaching the verbatim transcript that you find in the Congressional Record or Hansard).
--Exceptions. I've heard tell that two exceptional states -- Pennsylvania and Maine -- were publishing substantive records of their floor debates in a way that approached the Congressional Record. See Phillips Bradley, "Legislative Recording in the United States," American Political Science Review 29 (1935): 76. This is confirmed by A Guide to the Microfilm Collection of Early State Records (1950), which also notes a smattering of such publications for Indiana and Louisiana, but no other states. Ibid., xiv, D296-D299.
Hope this is helpful to some of you Legal History Blog readers. If I've left things out or gotten things wrong, please add a comment!
Acknowledgment: I thank George Fisher and Fred Shapiro for discussing some of these matters with me (but absolve them of any responsibility for what I've said!).
5 comments:
I'd like to nominate this for "most useful post in the history of this blog" (no offense to the rest of the LHB crew, who do fine work as well). Very much appreciated.
- November 13, 2013 at 2:24:00 PM EST
- Dan Ernst said...
No offense taken. I quite agree.
- November 13, 2013 at 2:51:00 PM EST
- Mitch Fraas said...
This is fantastic! I've had good luck searching for states as corporate authors in Hathi trust, there's a lot to go through but often some long series of relevant publications. e.g. for Arkansas: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/Home?lookfor=%22Arkansas.%22&type=author&inst=
Also wanted to note that the guide to the records of the states microfilm series is online at https://archive.org/details/guidetocollectio00jenk
- November 13, 2013 at 10:34:00 PM EST
What I think is important about the microfilm produced by Jenkins in his Early State Records microfilm series is that some of these materials that were around when he was microfilming them are no longer around or are crumbling. And example would be legislative journals. I have always wondered what the Library of Congress has in print for most states. The problem with digitizing the Jenkins microfilm is that it was produced over 50 years ago so the quality of the microfilm may not be that good. But I think that is what Maryland did.
- November 14, 2013 at 11:16:00 PM EST
Only the State of Maryland completely digitalized their part of the Records of the States of the United States of America:
- January 30, 2014 at 10:37:00 AM EST